Vol. 33-No.4 ISSN 0892-1571 March/April 2007-Adar/Nisan 5767 TEACHING TOLERANCE, UNDERSTANDING, AND UNITY n March 11, 2007 over one hun- resource developed by Yad Vashem, Vashem Jerusalem. They led the follow- “When the Nazis came for the communists, Odred educators gathered at the Martyrs’ and Heroes’ ing workshops: 1) The I remained silent; Pratt Mansions in NYC for the American Remembrance Authority, the Anti- 2) Jewish Resistance 3) Survivors and I was not a communist. Society for Yad Vashem’s Ninth Annual Defamation League, and the USC Shoah Liberators 4) Perpetrators, Collaborators, Professional Development Conference. Foundation Institute for Visual History and Bystanders and 5) The . When they locked up the social democrats, Once again, this program was co-spon- and Education. We were pleased to wel- he Echoes and Reflections curricu- I did not speak out; sored by the Association of Teachers of come representatives from all three insti- Tlum is a comprehensive ten-lesson I was not a social democrat. Social Studies of the United Federation tutions. We were also very excited about program that focuses on the history of of Teachers. Remarks on behalf of the having teachers from eight different the Holocaust within the context of con- When they came for the trade unionists, temporary issues. For example, it deals I did not speak out; with cultural diversity, genocide, and I was not a trade unionist. intolerance. This year’s conference tried to show educators how to utilize this When they came for me, innovative curriculum in their class- there was no one left to speak out.” rooms. The aim of the American Society for Yad Vashem hosting these education he educators who attended this conferences is to transmit the lessons of Tconference will be able to show this historical event to present and future their students the importance of social generations. Teaching about the awareness, so that the words “Never Holocaust in an age-appropriate and his- Again” will ring true. As one participant torically accurate manner will promote greater sensitiv- ity and understanding to reduce the hatred, intoler- ance and prejudice preva- lent in today’s society. What also sets this particular cur- riculum apart from others is its use of testimonies. This is one of the first multi-media From left to right: Shulamit Imber, Director of Pedagogy of the International School for Holocaust curricula to be used in class- Studies of Yad Vashem Jerusalem; Eli Zborowski, Chairman, American Society for Yad Vashem; rooms. Educators can have Carolyn Herbst, past president of ATSS/UFT; Elizabeth Zborowski, Cultural Director of the the voice of those people American Society for Yad Vashem; Caroline Massel, co-chair of the Young Leadership Associates who lived through the atroci- of the American Society for Yad Vashem at the 9th Annual Professional Development Conference. ties right in their classrooms Conference participants looking over the curriculum at the 9th president, Levi Anthony, were delivered states represented at this year’s confer- by using the DVD or VHS Annual Professional Development Conference. by Ms. Carolyn Herbst, past president of ence. provided with the curriculum. ATSS/UFT. Remarks were also given by The educational conference started As Shulamit Imber stated, it is so much noted, “Emphasizing the human element Caroline Massel, co-chair of the Young with remarks from Shulamit Imber, more than just the words that these sur- of the Holocaust allows for more thought- Leadership Associates of the American Director of Pedagogy of the International vivors use, it is the way their voices ful learning.” Society for Yad Vashem; as well as Mr. School for of Yad sound, they look in their eyes, and the Many people can remember their Eli Zborowski, Chairman of The Vashem Jerusalem. Her remarks, regard- posture of their bodies. teachers, they can remember the lesson American Society for Yad Vashem. Mr. ing the education philosophy of Yad Studying the Holocaust is important to they were taught. It is our hope that the Zborowski remarked that the American Vashem, were found “insightful, com- students today in a world of growing teachers who attend the American Society for Yad Vashem’s Educational pelling and passionate” by some confer- and anti-Semitism. A Society for Yad Vashem’s Educational Department “works to put a face on indi- ence participants. Other workshops dur- curriculum like Echoes and Reflections Conferences will be remembered for the vidual in order to intro- ing the day were also led by Dan Tarplin, will enable students to think about the lessons that they are transmitting. It is duce a human element to the story. Project Director of the A WORLD OF responsibilities they have as individuals, our hope that they will go on and inspire Transmitting these messages is our DIFFERENCE® Institute, Deborah when confronted with prejudice and intol- their students, teaching them tolerance, hope for the future.” Batiste, Project Director for Echoes and erance. The holocaust provides a con- understanding, and unity. This year, we were once again high- Reflections, and Stephanie McMahon- text for looking at the dangers of remain- For more information regarding lighting the Echoes and Reflections cur- Kaye, Coordinator of the Desk for ing silent in the face of the oppression of upcoming educational activities, please riculum. This is a valuable education International Seminars in English at Yad others. As Pastor Martin Neimoller said: contact our office at 212-220-4304.

IN THIS ISSUE I was a child of ...... 4 Holocaust heroine’s survival tale...... 5 French railroad sued over Holocaust...... 6 How sacrificed its to the Nazis...... 7 The American Society for Yad Vashem Annual Spring Luncheon...... 8 A tale of three women – and a lost family...... 8-9 Report from Yad Vashem...... 10 Was Churchill anti-Semitic?...... 12 Allies may have known of Holocaust plans...... 14 Jewish artist creates memorial for Kielce ...... 15 Hilel hosts Yad Vashem’s “No Child’s Play” exhibit in Florida...... 16 Page 2 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE March/April 2007- Adar/Nisan 5767

CLAIMS CONFERENCE HONORED GERMAN CLERICS ENRAGE YAD VASHEM FOR PARTNERSHIP AND SUPPORT tions to deeply entrenched and thorny n a tribute ceremony on November 29, projects. “As the importance of passing on ETGAR LEFKOVITS, THE JERUSALEM POST problems. Yad Vashem honored its longstanding the legacy of the Holocaust grows over “These unwarranted and offensive com- I ad Vashem lambasted a group of friends and partners at the Conference on time, and with a view to the coming years, parisons serve to diminish the memory of visiting German Catholic bishops for Jewish Material Claims Against Germany when the eyewitnesses will no longer be Y victims of the Holocaust and mollify the comparing the situation in the Palestinian (Claims Conference) for their steadfast among us, we must look towards securing consciences of those who seek to lessen territories with the Holocaust, calling the support of Yad Vashem’s activities for Holocaust remembrance for future gener- European responsibility for Nazi crimes,” contentious remarks “political exploitation more than 50 years. ations,” said Avner Shalev. “By supporting he wrote. and demagoguery” and a gross distortion Yad Vashem and the Claims , research and docu- of history. The German bishops’ bitterly con- Conference are now intending to enter mentation, the Claims Conference is ful- The sharp condemnation by ’s tentious comparisons stunned Yad into a new strategic partnership that will filling the last wishes of the Holocaust vic- Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Vashem officials, who had hosted the sen- allow Yad Vashem to embark upon large- tims, expressed in the many letters and Remembrance Authority followed reports ior Christian leaders just hours earlier. scale commemorative and educational messages they left behind.” in the German press of “In the morning, we saw comparisons made by the pictures at Yad GERMANY TO COMPENSATE HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS senior German bishops Vashem of the inhumane Warsaw , while in he German government plans to German parliament passed a law to grant between conditions in the dur- the evening we were in Tpay compensation to Holocaust sur- these survivors a small pension, but the the Ramallah Ghetto,” vivors who worked in Jewish ghettos set drive proved unsuccessful, due to bureau- ing World War II and Bishop Gregor Maria up by the Nazis. Weekly magazine Der cratic complications in processing the current conditions in Franz Hanke reportedly Spiegel said the government was making claims. In view of this, German Chancellor Ramallah, resulting said. a second attempt to pay damages to sur- Angela Merkel has now instructed the from Israeli military Another visiting bishop, viving workers from the ghettos, who, German finance ministry to settle the activities. Joachim Meisner, who unlike slave laborers compensated since claims in a non-bureaucratic manner, and “The remarks illus- German bishops during visit to Yad serves as the Archbishop 2000, generally earned a small,albeit set up a fund based on the model used for trate a woeful igno- Vashem. of Cologne, reportedly often negligible, wage. In 2002, the the slave labor victims, the magazine said. rance of history and a distorted sense of perspective,” Yad described the conditions at Israeli security checkpoints as “something done to ani- IRANIAN HOLOCAUST FOUNDATION Vashem Chairman Avner Shalev wrote in a letter to Cardinal Karl Lehmann, who led mals, not to humans.” DEMANDS DOCUMENTS ON JEWISH MASSACRE the Conference of German Catholic In his letter, the head of Yad Vashem noted the words of the late Pope John he so-called Holocaust Foundation is well-known for his anti-Semitic stand- Bishops on a 10-day visit to Israel and the Paul II when he visited Yad Vashem in of Iran demanded from Austria, points and sympathies for neo-Nazi Palestinian territories. T which he said “no one can diminish the Germany and Poland that they submit groups. He has, however, no official posi- “Making analogies between the mass scale” of the Holocaust. documents related to the massacre of tion in Iran’s political system. murder that was part of the plan to annihi- “I urge all people to keep the Holocaust Jews during the Second World War. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had late the Jewish people, carried out under out of cheap political exploitation and The head of the Foundation, branded the Holocaust as a “fairy tale” the German Nazi regime and the current demagoguery,” Shalev wrote. Mohammad-Ali Ramin, told IRNA that the and demanded the relocation of Israel to situation in Ramallah, and using words “Such use of the Holocaust misrepresents documents were needed for the “fact-find- either Europe or America. whose rhetorical power is immense, does both today’s reality as well as that of the ing commission” to clarify the real extent Ahmadinejad had not attended the nothing to help us understand what is Shoah; it distorts historical facts and context, of the Holocaust and the number of Holocaust conference in Tehran, but wel- going on today; such words only further and trivializes the memory of the Holocaust’s Jewish victims. comed the formation of the fact-finding poison the atmosphere making it that victims and events,” he concluded. The fact-finding commission was commission at a reception of the partici- much more difficult to find workable solu- formed during a Holocaust conference in pants. Tehran last December, which had been Ahmadinejad had blamed the West for YAD VASHEM TEACHES JORDANIAN EDUCATORS attended by controversial historians chal- allegedly prohibiting any investigation into ad Vashem secretly taught a group high-ranking Jordanian officials, and was lenging the extent of the mass killings of the Holocaust, while accepting insults of Jordanian educators about the surprised that they didn’t reject the idea. Jews by the German Nazi regime. against Muslim Prophet Mohammed in Y Holocaust. “They were not at all familiar with the The conference had prompted wide- form of cartoons as part of freedom of Ya’acov Yaniv, a member of Yad Vashem’s subject of the Holocaust,” Yaniv said. spread international criticism, and Ramin expression. main school of Holocaust studies, told the “They did not know its influence on media that a seminar was held at the Israeli society and really knew almost HOLOCAUST MONUMENT AND JEWISH GRAVES Jerusalem museum for about a dozen nothing about us.” DESECRATED IN ODESSA Jordanian Muslim educators in 2006. The seminar was given in Arabic and in monument to Holocaust victims and the city, which is home of a large Jewish Yaniv told Yediot Achronot that he initiated English, and included a meeting with a Ahundreds of graves have been community since centuries. the project after a chance conversation with Holocaust survivor. defaced with swastikas in a Jewish ceme- The monument was erected at the site tery in Odessa, southern Ukraine, local where thousands of Jews were killed and TAGS A NAZI COLLABORATOR: THE RAILWAY police said. burned by the Nazis between 1941-1944. French court ruling has reopened concentration camps. Unidentified people desecrated the It is reported that police launched a probe Athe country’s wartime record and The railroad did nothing to stop the Holocaust monument with into the “hooliganism.” revived a question that has shadowed it operation, the court found, and on its own red swastikas and with an But Avraham Wolf, for years: Who should be held responsible initiative, chose to cram its passengers inscription: “Congratulations chief of Odessa and for the mistreatment and deportation of into cattle cars in “abominable” conditions, on the Holocaust.” southern Ukraine, told French Jews during World War II? with no food or water, for trips that lasted “There are also swastikas EJP he rather believes An administrative tribunal in Toulouse, days. on hundreds graves, up to that this act is “purely France, ruled that the state-owned rail- It was the first time a French court had one thousand according to anti-Semitic.” road, the SNCF, was liable for its part in condemned a government institution, diverse information,” Boleslav Ukrainian sociologists transporting some 76,000 Jews to transit rather than an individual, in connection Kapulkin, a spokesman for Odessa’s Jewish recently expressed concern about a rise centers in France and then on to Nazi with Holocaust crimes. community, told reporters. in xenophobic attitudes in the country over “It’s a planned operation as the monu- the last years. ment and the cemetery are in two different Ukraine is home to about 450,000 Jews, VANDALS IN EASTERN POLAND BADLY DAMAGED locations,” he said. one of the largest Jewish community in HALF OF THE TOMBSTONES IN A JEWISH CEMETERY He said such incident is rather rare in the world. alf of the 20 tombstones in the their property away, and an evangelical HJewish cemetery of Swidin were priest in the town thinks the people who JUDGE ORDERS SS DEPORTATION broken March 1, according to Albert did this to the cemetery were reacting to U.S. judge ordered the deportation a Justice Department release, Kumpf Stankowski of the Foundation for the that,” he said. Aof a Wisconsin man who acknowl- acknowledged his role as a guard at Preservation of Jewish Heritage in It was the third time in five years that the edged his past as an SS death camp “Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp in Warsaw. cemetery was attacked. Last year, when guard. Germany; at an SS labor camp in “This was done during the same time as three tombstones were damaged, Josias Kumpf was stripped of his citi- Trawniki, Poland, where 8,000 Jewish the Claims Conference was visiting in Stankowski asked the regional prosecutor Poland, and I have no doubt that the act to investigate. zenship in 2005 after it was established men, women, and children were mur- against the cemetery was related,” he “The prosecutor told us it was the wind that he concealed his SS past when emi- dered in a single day, as part of a two-day said. Stankowksi was referring to a Claims that caused the problem. So I brought it to grating from Austria to the United States in mass-murder operation involving 42,000 Conference meeting with the government a higher prosecutor and the case was still 1956. Last year, U.S. authorities launched victims at three camps.” about compensation for Jewish property under investigation when this destruction deportation proceedings against him, and Kumpf, who says he never participated stolen by the Nazis and communists. happened, he said. “But I can tell you that immigration judge Jennie Giambastiani in the killings, plans to appeal. If deported, “The articles in the press gave readers the the police have shown no interest in issued the order in January. According to he has chosen to go to Germany. feeling that the Jews were coming to take really investigating the case.” March/April 2007- Adar/Nisan 5767 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 3

VATICAN LAWYERS CLAIM NAZI REGIME VIOLATED NO YAD VASHEM AND FRIENDS LAW IN GENOCIDE OF 500,000 SERBS, JEWS AND ROMA FROM SPANISH SPEAKING COUNTRIES awyers for the Vatican Bank — Attorneys for the Holocaust survivors UNITE FOR HOLOCAUST SEMINAR Lincluding Pope Benedict’s personal are outraged that the Vatican Bank sug- hirty-two members of the Yad denial, Holocaust education, the gests genocide and plunder are permissi- attorney — have argued that genocide Vashem Friends Societies in Spain, Righteous Among the Nations, technology ble acts under international law. Jonathan T committed in during the Second Argentina, Venezuela, and Mexico partici- in the service of memory, and met with Levy, one of the attorneys for the World War by a Nazi regime was permis- pated in an informative and moving week- Holocaust survivors, and family who had Holocaust survivors, questions whether sible under international law. long seminar at the International School been reunited thanks to the Central In the ongoing lawsuit Alperin v. Vatican the Pope is even aware of what the bank’s attorneys are proposing: “On the one for Holocaust Studies Database of Shoah Bank, the Vatican Bank has filed a motion at Yad Vashem. This is Victims' Names. set for hearing in November which argues hand, the Vatican is quick to condemn Israel and Serbia in recent years, but in the first seminar for Among the partici- in part that the Vatican Bank is immune essence, says its O.K. to butcher 500,000 Friends Societies of pants were Judge because the Nazi-backed Croatian people, steal their belongings and stash it Yad Vashem, and was Daniel Rafecas of regime did not violate international law by in the Vatican Bank...Pope Benedict initiated by the Argentina who has slaughtering 500,000 of its own citizens – should be concerned that the moral Association of Yad been active in combat- Serbs, Jews, and Roma (Gypsies) in an integrity of his Papacy is being under- Vashem in Mexico. ting neo-Nazis in that ethnic cleansing campaign. mined in a Federal Court.” Participants met with country, and Dr The Vatican Bank stands accused of the The lawsuit has been ongoing since Yad Vashem Stephanie Kurian post-war laundering of the profits of geno- 1999. Despite growing evidence of the Chairman Avner Fastlicht, president of cide –- including dental gold taken from Vatican Bank’s complicity in criminal acts, Shalev, had the oppor- Participants in the first Yad Vashem semi- the Association of Yad the victims of the Nazi-backed Croatian the lawsuit has been resisted tenaciously tunity to explore the nar for members of Friends Societies of Vashem in Mexico who regime known as the Ustasha. by the Vatican Bank. new museums at Yad Yad Vashem with Yad Vashem Chairman shared some of their Vashem, as well as the Avner Shalev, (front row, fourth from experiences with the Visual Center and right), MK Rabbi Michael Melchior participants. NAMES RECOVERY MONTH LAUNCHED (front, fifth from right) and Perla Haza, Learning Center, and A number of partici- IN ADVANCE OF HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAY Director, Iberoamericana Desk, International to hear about new pants are teachers in Relations Division, Yad Vashem (front left) arch-April 2007 has been desig- er,” warns Avner Shalev, Chairman of projects and initiatives the Jewish schools. Mnated Names Recovery Month by Yad Vashem. “Jewish communities play from senior Yad Vashem staff. During the The International School for Holocaust Yad Vashem. The month, including both a key role by actively reaching out to the seminar, participants also heard interest- Studies is currently active in 22 countries Passover and Holocaust Remembrance generation that best remembers before it ing lectures on , Holocaust and 11 languages. Day (April 16), will be marked by local is too late.” community campaigns to recover names Thousands of posters and tens of thou- of Holocaust victims. Thousands of sands of Pages of Testimony are being COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY BONDED WITH NAZIS Jewish communities will engage in this distributed to , Holocaust historical grassroots initiative. centers, Jewish community centers, olumbia is one of our nation’s most anniversary, a celebration attended by top Names Recovery Month is part of the agencies, federations and schools glob- Cprestigious institutions of learning. But Nazi officials. overall 11th hour campaign calling upon ally in preparation for Names Recovery now, it’s facing the ugliest of allegations. “They displayed gross insensitivity to people to memorialize Jews murdered in Month.Communities are enlisting volun- “It’s a disgrace,” said Oklahoma Prof. barbaric acts,” Norwood said. “They were the Holocaust by recording their names, teers to assist survivors and their families Stephen Norwood, a holocaust expert. in a position to bring Nazi crimes to wider and when available, photos and other to complete Pages of Testimony. “Horrifying. Outrageous.” attention. They failed to take that opportu- biographical data on Pages of Testimony. Since the Names Database went online Norwood, considered an expert of Nazi nity.” It has taken upwards of five decades to in November 2004, there have been over Germany and the Holocaust, earned his Norwood lays the blame at the feet of document over 3.1 million names cur- 11 million visitors, from 215 countries. doctorate in history from Columbia. then University president Nicholas Murray rently listed in the online Central Some 465,000 names and biographical Norwood claims that at the height of Butler — ironically, a former Nobel Peace Database of Shoah Victims’ Names. details and nearly 5,000 photos have ’s power in the mid 1930s, as Prize recipient — who he said hosted a “Millions more names may be lost forev- been added to the Database. the Third Reich removed Jewish profes- German ambassador at Columbia shortly sors and students from its universities, after the Nazis came to power in 1933. GERMAN COURT CONVICTS FIVE MEN Columbia “enhanced” Hitler’s regime by “They were used by the Nazis on several FOR BURNING ANNE FRANK’S DIARY sending a school delegate to Germany to occasions to enhance Nazi prestige,” celebrate Heidelberg University’s 550th Norwood said. court in Magdeburg, Germany con- Germany with up to five years’ jail as sedition. Avicted five men of sedition for throw- The men stood in a circle holding flam- ing a copy of Anne Frank’s Diary onto a ing torches and shouted “It’s all alien,” as ARAB NOMINATED AS RIGHTEOUS bonfire last year at a community party the flag and book were hurled into the Tunisian farmer was the first Arab Arab rescuers’ desire not to be found, organized by neo- Nazis. flames. Judge Eicke told the accused that Anominated for Yad Vashem’s since the Holocaust, which made plain the The men were each handed a suspend- burning Frank’s book and calling it “alien” Righteous Gentile designation. Jews’ need for their own state, has was the same thing as pub- ed sentence of nine Ha’aretz reported that the efforts of become a touchy subject in the Arab licly approving the months’ imprisonment. Khaled Abd al-Wahab, a Tunisian farmer world. The court in Magdeburg Holocaust. “You insulted Anne who died in 1997, were discovered by his- Survivor Anny Boukris told Satloff how also convicted the men, Frank’s human dignity,” he torian Robert Satloff. Wahab hid her and 24 relatives on his aged 24 to 29, of insulting told them. “That is overt Some 60 Muslims are among the more farm. the memory of the dead. racism.” He said the bonfire than 20,000 Righteous already Boukris, who was 11 at the time, wrote The Summer Solstice was an echo of a public named by the Holocaust museum and that Wahab risked his life when he Party last summer in the burning by Nazis in Berlin in memorial in Jerusalem, but no Arabs. stopped a German officer from raping her small town of Pretzien 1933 of books which they Satloff, executive director of the mother. caused uproar in intended to censor. Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Satloff traveled to the farm and inter- Germany after it was The director of the Anne attributed this partly to historians’ lack of viewed witnesses, who verified Boukris’ Anne Frank revealed that the town Frank Centre in Berlin, research in the area, and also to some testimony. mayor and police were also present and Thomas Heppener, welcomed the ruling saw nothing wrong in the book and a US and praised the judge’s “spectacular AUSTRIA SEEKS HEIRS FOR ARTWORKS flag being burned amid applause by torch- speech” to the accused. Judge Bruns dis- waving neo-Nazis. Local policemen missed the defense case that the men STOLEN BY NAZIS claimed they had never heard of Frank. had just felt oppressed by Germany’s evil fund for victims of the Nazi annexa- found will be auctioned off, and the bene- past as “utter drivel.” Denying the Holocaust is punishable in Ation of Austria is looking for the own- fits given to survivors of the Nazi ers of thousands of artworks lying in Holocaust, Lessing said. POLISH JEWRY MUSEUM TO BE CONSTRUCTED IN WARSAW national museums, which are waiting to The fund, which was created in 1995, is onstruction on the long-awaited formed by the Nazis into the Warsaw be returned to their mainly Jewish owners the main agency in Austria dealing with CMuseum of the History of Polish Ghetto. It will focus not only on the or their heirs. the restitution of stolen artworks. It deals Jews will begin in the Polish capital next Holocaust, but also on the 800 years of Hannah Lessing, the secretary general not only with property which needs to be fall, and the museum’s doors are expect- Jewish life in Poland that the Holocaust of the Austrian National Fund for the vic- returned, but also distributes money to ed to open within three years. obliterated. Poland’s Jewish community tims of National Socialism, told Agence compensate the victims of Nazism. Warsaw’s chief architect, Michal numbered some 3.5 million prior to World France Presse that 2,600 artworks out of So far, the fund has paid out a total 180 Borowski, confirmed that work on the mul- War II. However, the vast majority died in 10,000 have already found their rightful million euros, or about 5,000 euros to timillion-dollar multimedia facility would the Holocaust. owner since the works were listed on the each Austrian survivor of the Holocaust. finally begin after more than a decade of Financed by the Polish government, Internet several months ago. It has also paid compensation to Austrians preparation. Warsaw City Council and private donors, The works include paintings, manu- who were thrown out of their homes by The museum will be built in an area of the project will cost some $55 million. It is scripts, musical scores, sculptures, and the Nazis, as well as holders of life insur- the city that was the center of Jewish life expected to attract some 250,000 to furniture. ance, bank accounts and stolen savings prior to World War II, but was then trans- 500,000 visitors each year. The works for whom owners cannot be accounts. Page 4 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE March/April 2007- Adar/Nisan 5767 BOOKBOOK REVIEWSREVIEWS HIDING IN THE OPEN SCORCHED: A COLLECTION OF Hiding in the open. By Zenon Neumark. gangs of blackmailers, which infested SHORT STORIES ON SURVIVORS Valentine Mitchell, 2006. 216 pp. $23.50 Warsaw and other cities, robbing hidden Scorched: A Collection of Short Stories Jews of their last belongings and ble.” She remembers the shots fired by a REVIEWED BY TOM TUGEND on Survivors. By Irit Amiel. Translated denouncing those who sheltered them. Ukranian soldier as they went on their from the Hebrew by Riva Rubin. hole libraries are filled with Living as a Polish worker, Neumark way, mortally terrified, to the appointed The Library of Holocaust Testimonies. accounts of the Holocaust, with draws a detailed picture of “normal” daily getaway place. Finally, since that day, W Vallentine Mitchell, London, 2006. 93 pp. eyewitness reports by victims, perpetra- life under Nazi occupation, and a vivid she revealingly and sadly notes, she has tors and bystanders, together with analy- portrait of the Viennese, who within a few REVIEWED BY DR. DIANE CYPKIN never felt “at home” in her life again . . . ses by historians and fictionalized ver- Interestingly, in “Batya,” a woman born days after their city fell to the Red Army, n all the years this reviewer has cri- sions by novelists. Basie, orphaned as a child in Auschwitz, were back at their theaters, concert halls tiqued books for M&R – more than fif- Rarer are accounts by those, mostly and ballrooms. I “appears” to all the world “un-scorched.” teen years – she has never felt the need She gets to Israel with an adoring com- young Jewish men While Neumark did not experience the to comment on the title of a book. But, and women, who horrors of the concentration camps, he panion, Aaron, also a survivor. She mar- this book’s main title deserves comment. ries him. They have a family. And yet, took their fates into describes unsparingly the bloody slaugh- It is so very right. The Holocaust was a their own hands, ter of Polish underground fighters during something is very wrong. Something spir- roaring fire that ruthlessly consumed its itual . . . A something is missing that can- passed over to the the 1944 Warsaw uprising, one year after prey. And even those it didn’t consume, “other” side to sur- the heroic Jewish defense of the ghetto. not be retrieved and trying doesn’t help. but merely touched, were Scorched! The end is sad and real and not “pretti- vive as clandestine He devotes three chapters to his work Additionally, in all the years this review- “Aryans” or resist- with two non-Jewish Polish resistance fied” for those looking for “happily ever er has critiqued after” endings. ance fighters. group, one left-wing, the other right-wing. books for M&R, she One of the more eumark acknowledges that not all eanwhile, in “Contemporary has generally cri- Tangle,” the child of a survivor feels readable and con- NJews could have followed his tiqued non-fiction M vincing of such rec- escape choice and undertake the lonely the consequences of a parent’s “scorch- works. But, like ing.” Set in Israel, Naomi joyfully comes ollections is by risks of seeking daily shelter, food and The Library of work, while facing constant exposure. to visit her son, Boaz, in Eilat. He is seri- Zenon Neumark, a retired aerospace Holocaust But many who were otherwise equipped ous about a beautiful, blond young lady, engineer, who waited until his late 70s to Testimonies that to take the risks were deterred by the Ruth, who looks Danish. But Ruth is write his story. has published this comforting presence of family and friends German, and sees the numbers tattooed Neumark was barely 15 when Nazi work under the aus- in the ghetto, a reassuring daily routine, on Naomi’s arm. How will it end? Will armies occupied his native Lodz in pices of Vallentine and an inability to imagine what was in Boaz and Ruth marry? What about how September, 1939. He was 20, and living in Mitchell, and has Vienna, when Soviet troops liberated him store for them. Naomi feels? Will the love Naomi bears In the end, those who took their chances previously only published non-fiction, for her son mitigate her feelings vis-à-vis in April 1945. Scorched: A Collection of Short Stories on During those long years, he lived as a vastly increased their odds for survival. In Ruth? The story is gripping, and the end, Warsaw alone, according to the best sta- Survivors by Irit Amiel, is a deserved thought-provoking. In fact, it makes one Polish Catholic with forged papers, exception. For, indeed, the slim volume is escaped from two forced labor camps, tistics, 28,000 Jews lived outside the ghet- wonder what they would do. to on the Polish side, either in hiding or exceptional. Its stories are unforgettable, Surely, Irit Amiel’s own memories and joined two resistance groups, was poignantly told, simple, yet powerful, each betrayed by some friends and saved by with false papers. Of these, 41 percent the memories of the many she spoke to, survived the war, compared to only 3 per- and every one . . . some strangers, among them Jews, Poles all survivors and witnesses of the cent of camp inmates. Thus, for example, Scorched begins and ethnic , and helped others to Holocaust, ground this volume and make Neumark is an engineer, not a profes- with a piece entitled, “Leaf from a Diary.” survive. it valuable. Surely, too, the fact that all sional writer, and the book is much the Here, a woman remembers how, at the To assure his own survival, Neumark survivors were “scorched” – some more, better for it. He tells his story without liter- age of eleven, she was smuggled out of a enjoyed certain advantages. He was some less – and that Ms. Amiel brings to ary embellishments, honestly and Polish ghetto – never to see her father, the fore the consequences of that experi- young and strong, could pass as a non- straightforward, and with self-deprecating her mother, or her childhood again. She Jew, spoke fluent Polish without ence in so many ways, makes this work humor. remembers the look of the mournful street even more valuable to us. inflections, was immensely resourceful “Hiding in the Open” is part of the excel- that autumn day. She remembers how and had a great deal of luck. lent London-based Library of Holocaust her father tried so very hard to tell her, as Dr. Diane Cypkin is a Professor of Media His greatest fear and nemesis were not Testimonies, whose eminent editors casually as he could, that they had to get and Communication Arts at Pace the or Polish anti-Semites, but include historian Sir Martin Gilbert. to the Jewish Hospital “as soon as possi- University. I WAS A CHILD OF HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS I Was a Child of Holocaust Survivors. By adult graphic novel, which apparently has something different here. The book is Now, we can look at Eisenstein’s book Bernice Eisenstein. McClelland & Stewart, to look like an uptown comic book. Or filled with the author’s cartoony drawings, for what it is, rather than for what it isn’t. 2006. 187 pp. $32.99 does it? comic strips and word balloons in a wild She presents some of her story in a tradi- have in front of me I Was a Child of array of sizes, shapes and layouts. tional narrative. One example: She REVIEWED BY STAN MACK IHolocaust Survivors. It’s a memoir in Eisenstein’s book is not a comic book-y describes how, growing up, she traded on n the old days, that is, when I was which Bernice Eisenstein examines her graphic novel (a meaningless term, any- her status as the child of survivors to gain Iyoung, life for the book reader was love for and anger toward her parents, way, since many of them are not novels). attention and privileges — and even simple. There were books, and there were who met in Nor is it an illustrated book (the traditional dates. illustrated books. Of course, there were Auschwitz. book illustration elaborates on a particular At the same time, her drawings commu- always pulpy comic books, but they were She speaks of moment in the narrative, but doesn’t move nicate some ideas faster and better than mainly adventure stories for boys, and her torment the story forward). We could, instead, call words. In one drawing that sprawls across were generally considered a disposable growing up in hers a hybrid, but there aren’t any shelves a spread, she draws herself as a child, item. Today, bookstores trumpet a new Toronto as the in the bookstore labelled “hybrid.” This artist’s brush in hand, speaking to the section, “Graphic Novel.” Okay, but what child of sur- book is in the language of the author, a reader. She’s pointing to her drawing of exactly is a graphic novel? vivors whose writer and an artist, who has chosen a her mother, grandmother and aunt, now Over the past several years, a number relationship particular way to tell her story. Must we looking matronly and well-fed in 2002, dis- of books — notably Art Spiegelman’s with their chil- chase around looking for new genre playing the consecutive numbers branded Holocaust saga Maus and Marjane dren may well labels to fit each variation of words and onto their arms at Auschwitz. Satrapi’s Iranian political memoir have been pictures? he problem with artists who both Persepolis — have broken new publishing permanently For argument’s sake, allow me to rede- Twrite and draw is that they may do ground by using comic-strip formats to tell scarred by their horrendous experiences. fine a graphic book. It is a novel, memoir, one better than the other. In Eisenstein’s serious stories. They, combined with the She searches for connections to her par- history or documentary that tells its story case, I sometimes struggled with her sen- aggressive campaign by comic-strip devo- ents’ past, a past they will not look at, equally in words and visuals, and does a tences. She seemed to feel compelled to tees to have comic strips accepted as a never mind interpret for her. Her goal is to richer job than either art form would by add extra words, possibly in the belief that legitimate art form, have caught the atten- get closer to an understanding of what itself. By this definition, each “graphic” we might otherwise miss the message. tion of publishers fighting to keep compet- they lived through and, in the process, to work would be evaluated in terms of its “How is one able to regain connection, itive in the new multimedia universe. find some peace for herself. combined power to inform and move the belonging, when all that was as innocent Witness the transmogrification of my old There is a large body of literature to reader, rather than by its adherence to the as being alive has been taken away,” she pal, the pulpy comic, into the serious, which this book belongs. However, there’s purity of a grid system. (Continued on page 13) March/April 2007- Adar/Nisan 5767 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 5 HOLOCAUST HEROINE'S SURVIVAL TALE 10ft high and topped with broken glass, had Treblinka death camp in north east gency safe houses, where they were BY ADAM EASTON, BBC been built to segregate Warsaw’s Jews. Poland. During that summer, 300,000 taught basic Catholic rituals to pass as Within a couple of months, almost were murdered. Poles until a family could be found to take rena Sendlerowa recently celebrated 400,000 people were confined to an area Persuading parents to part with their them in. her 97th birthday in her small room in I roughly the size of New York’s Central loved ones was particularly traumatic. “I once carried such a tearful, broken- a Warsaw nursing home. Park in appalling condi- hearted little boy to other guardians when Among the flower-bearing well-wishers tions. he asked me, crying and sobbing, ‘Please were a number of people who owe their At the time, Irena tell me how many mums can you have, for lives to this tiny, courageous woman. Sendlerowa was a 30- this is the third one I’m going to’,” she They were among the estimated 2,500 year-old nurse who said. Jewish children Mrs. Sendlerowa and a worked for the city’s EXECUTION FOILED small group of social workers rescued health and care depart- from the Warsaw ghetto during World War II. ment. Since 1939 she n December 1942, the Polish under- She is a Polish Catholic who risked her had been taking enor- Iground set up Zegota, the Council of life to save Jews during the Holocaust. mous risks giving Jews Assistance for Jews. Mrs. Sendlerowa For doing so, she was awarded the title food and shelter. The became the head of its children’s depart- of Righteous Among the Nations by Yad penalty for helping ment. She had noted the names of all of Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust remembrance Jews in Nazi-occupied the rescued children on cigarette papers authority. Poland was death. It and sealed them in two bottles. Unlike her fellow Righteous, German was a threat that was In April 1943, several thousand of the industrialist , who was often carried out. remaining Jews in the ghetto rose up immortalized in Steven Spielberg’s film But she recruited a Irena Sendlerowa with Eli Zborowski, Chairman of the American and against the Germans. Armed with hand Schindler’s List, few people have heard of group of her social worker International Societies for Yad Vashem, during his visit to Poland in guns, grenades and home-made bomb Irena Sendlerowa. colleagues to rescue chil- February/ launchers, they held an SS brigade at bay RISKS dren from the ghetto. Mrs. Sendlerowa could give no guarantee for three weeks. By mid-May the ghetto “I was brought up to believe that a person the child would survive. was a giant field of rubble. hen the war broke out Warsaw must be rescued when drowning, regard- “That was when we witnessed infernal Mrs. Sendlerowa continued her work, Wwas home to 1.3 million people, of less of religion and nationality,” she said. scenes. Father agreed but mother didn’t. but on October 20, 1943, she was arrest- whom 380,000 were Jews, making it the Mrs. Sendlerowa and a colleague, Irena Grandmother cuddled the child very ten- ed at her home. She was taken to the largest Jewish community in the world Schultz, were allowed to enter the ghetto derly and, weeping bitterly, said ‘I won’t notorious Gestapo headquarters in central outside New York. The Nazis moved ,using special work passes. They smug- give away my grandchild at any price’. Warsaw and tortured. During the ses- quickly to identify and isolate the city’s gled children out in ambulances, through “We sometimes had to leave such unfor- sions, they broke her legs and feet, but Jewish population. the sewers, or through a courthouse on tunate families without taking their chil- she refused to reveal any names. Jewish-owned businesses had to be clear- the edge of the ghetto, which had a pas- dren from them. I went there the next day “I still carry the marks on my body of ly marked and Jews had to wear armbands sage leading to the “Aryan” side. to see what the whole building had come what those ‘German supermen’ did to me with the . Then, on 15 November to and often found that everyone had then. I was sentenced to death,” she said. TORN APART 1940, Warsaw’s German Governor Ludwig been taken for transport to the death Zegota managed to foil the plan after Fischer officially created the ghetto. n July 1942, the Nazis began the mass camps,” she said. they bribed a Polish-speaking German More than 10 miles of brick walls, up to Ideportation of Warsaw’s Jews to the The children were first taken to emer- (Continued on page 14) POSTWAR GERMAN GOVERNMENT AND CIA SHIELDED NAZI CRIMINALS he recent publication of some The references to Eichmann were not active until 1945. In this position, he was is considered as a half-breed with a full- T27,000 pages of secret CIA docu- followed up by the German or American the co-author with William Stuckart of the Jewish grandparent, the five-eighths Jew, ments has brought to light new details secret services because it was feared he first commentary on the Nuremberg race with two full-Jewish grandparents and one regarding the close ties between the polit- might divulge information about Hans laws. After the Nazis had seized half-Jewish grandparent, is a half-breed ical elite in post-war Germany and leading Globke, a lawyer in 1939 as a so-called protectorate, with two full-Jewish grandparents. Nazis who survived the collapse of the in Hitler’s Interior Globke was involved in the elaboration After the Second World War, Globke Third Reich. Ministry and the there of the Codex of Jewish Law, a maintained that he had merely comment- The publication is a result of a 1999 US author of a com- euphemism for the expropriation and ed on the laws, and claimed that he bore law, which had been opposed by the CIA, mentary on the repression of the Jewish population. no responsibility for their development or that regulates the release of US govern- Nazi’s notorious After 1945, Globke denied having any implementation. This was a lie. His supe- ment documents concerning German and Nuremberg race close involvement with the Nazi regime. rior, Nazi Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick, Japanese war crimes. The historian laws. Following But he was by no means a mere fellow who was condemned to death in the 1946 Timothy Naftali from the University of the war, Globke traveler, as he claimed. Working in the , had issued the following Virginia, who has seen the documents, became an under- Prussian Interior Ministry even before testimonial on Globke in 1938: Senior discovered that the West German govern- secretary of state Hitler came to power in 1933, Globke had government advisor Globke is unques- ment under Konrad Adenauer had known in Germany, and ordered that Efforts by Jewish persons to tionably among the most capable and the secret whereabouts of Adolf was regarded as mask their Jewish origins by changing most efficient officials in my ministry. Eichmann since at least 1958 and had the grey (in reality, brown) eminence of their Jewish names cannot therefore be Adenauer’s right-hand man was involved covered this up. The CIA had also shielded the Adenauer chancellorship. supported. in the elaboration, formulation and applica- the Nazi mass murderer from prosecution. People who sought assistance from him tion of laws whose consequence was the WHO WAS GLOBKE? The documents published by the CIA for their relatives during the war were final solution of the Jewish question i.e., make clear that both the German and nlike Eichmann, the lawyer Hans harshly rejected and threatened against genocide in Auschwitz and elsewhere. American governments had shielded Globke had not fled abroad after the continuing to support Jews and Poles. U THE CIA, THE ADENAUER Eichmann for a long time in order to pro- Second World War, but had risen to Globke could not deny his authorship of AND THE NAZIS tect the Nazi elements that they were become an undersecretary of state and the commentary on the Nuremberg race deploying against the Soviet Union in the security advisor to Chancellor Adenauer. laws, printed by the C.H. Beck publishing lobke was, however, only one of Cold War. He was regarded as the Chancellor’s house ([Commentary on the German Race Gmany. The names of the high-rank- A memo to the CIA by a German secret right-hand man, and was responsible for Legislation], Munich and Berlin, 1936). ing officials, judges, state lawyers, SS service operative on March 19, 1958, the fact that numerous old Nazis gained Globkes text contains among other things men and Nazi party members of the Third noted that, according to reports, Eichmann prominent posts in the Federal Republic the following remark: The dramatic decline Reich who continued their careers in the had been living in Argentina since 1952 of Germany (West Germany). Adenauer in feeling for the purity of blood in the Federal Republic of Germany, more or under the pseudonym Ricardo Clement. stood by Globke throughout his term in decades before the radical change [Hitlers less without interruption, would fill vol- Eichmann escaped from an American office, which ended in 1963. coming to power] appears to urgently umes. Here are only some. internment camp in 1945. He then lived in Globke came from a rich Catholic demand social intervention. He also wrote: Hermann Josef Abs was a member of Germany for several years, using forged household, studying law after the First “The Jews must resign themselves to the the executive board of the Deutsche Bank papers. In 1950, he, like many other World War. He attained his doctorate in fact that their influence on the organization from 1938 to 1945. Among other things, Nazis, went to Argentina along the so- 1922 and three years later was deputy of German life is gone forever.” he was jointly responsible for the called rat line, receiving help from the chief of police in Aachen. In 1929, he Globke also classified the degrees of Arianization (expropriation) of Jewish Vatican. Somewhat later, he was joined by entered the Prussian Interior Ministry, and Jewishness in his commentary: The three- businesses and banks. After the war, he his family, and they lived undisturbed in by 1932 had already risen within the eighths Jew, who possesses one full- was deeply involved in the setting up of Buenos Aires. Reich Interior Ministry, where he was Jewish and one half-Jewish grandparent, (Continued on page 13) Page 6 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE March/April 2007- Adar/Nisan 5767 SURVIVORS’SURVIVORS’ CORNERCORNER HOLOCAUST STILL HAUNTS CHILDREN OF SURVIVORS survivors. “When you’re vulnerable, why many have experienced anti-Semitism to She picked up a framed black-and-white BY TIM SHUFELT increase your vulnerability?” validate that feeling.” photo of a naked baby sleeping. “That Another organizer, Margie Levitt, also a Ms. Dojc said there are certain triggers was my mother’s nephew. He was six or rowing up in following the child of Holocaust survivors, said she that should be avoided in the company of seven when he was gassed.” Second World War, Eva Dojc said G agrees. survivors, like references to “showers.” The conference, held every three each Christmas her father would drag a Ms. Levitt said she was prompted to The sight of dogs can also conjure up years, provides a forum for survivor chil- tree into their courtyard apartment, mak- change her behavior by an incident that painful memories for some. dren to forge bonds, Ms. David said, ing sure all the neighbors could see. It took place 21 years ago this month One should also keep a close eye on adding that they share a sense of com- stood in a corner, undecorated, for a cou- aboard an Italian cruise ship. On Oct. 7, possible health problems. In many of the ple of weeks until her father dragged it munity that others might find difficult to 1985, heavily armed Palestinian terrorists camps in Europe, the sick were automati- back out again. understand. hijacked the Achille Lauro near Egypt. cally killed. “So maybe they don’t tell you When the family escaped to Canada in “Most of them feel quite privileged and Leon Klinghoffer, a disabled Jewish they’re sick until it’s too late,” Ms. Dojc the fall of 1956, nine-year-old Eva asked quite lucky to be in this world. The plan in retiree from New York, was shot and said. her father whether they would be getting a 1945 was that this whole generation thrown overboard, along with his wheel- he conference held a panel discus- tree. would not exist,” she said. chair. Tsion on returning to places in But Ms. Levitt is eager to dispel the “No, we don’t need a tree,” her father “Up until then I always wore a little Europe where Jews were persecuted and said. “We’re Jewish.” stereotype that survivor children are mezuzah that was given to me when I was massacred. emotionally damaged or dysfunctional. Ms. Dojc’s father, who was forced into a 12,” Ms. Levitt said. “I took it off that day Ms. Levitt, for example, said in 2001 she labor camp during the war, lost his parents After she was born, her father’s two and never put it back on.” returned to Poland, where her mother younger brothers lived with her until she and one of his sisters in the Holocaust. Paula David, a social worker at the spent three years in a slave labor camp Her mother survived Auschwitz, but her was six years old. Baycrest Wagman Centre, a long-term that produced munitions. “So here I was, an only child born after mother’s parents, two brothers and two care facility in Toronto that houses one of “In Krakow, I saw beautiful iron works, sisters were killed. After liberation, with the war to four survivors. I was never the largest populations of Holocaust sur- like the Star of David, and beautiful syna- spoiled materially, but with love and the oppression and massacres fresh in vivors in North America, said that those gogues.... There was a square with affection,” Ms. Levitt said. “I have always their minds, her parents concealed their restaurants serving Jewish food. It’s all sentiments echo those of other survivor known what’s important in life,” she said. ethnicity and religion for fear of further Jewish. The only thing missing were the families. Ms. Dojc said the literature on the sub- persecution. “If you have intimately experienced Jews,” she said, clutching a tissue. “It was ject, mostly case studies of people in Ms. Dojc said she has adopted a similar oppression, ranging from personal insults haunting.” therapy, can be misleading. instinct over time. to someone wanting to annihilate you, you Her father’s two brothers survived the “The people that never go for help, they “The antenna is up,” said Ms. Dojc, one are going to be cautious of how you pres- Holocaust, but her mother lost her entire don’t write case studies about,” she said. of the organizers of a conference in ent yourself,” Ms. David said. “You don’t family, Ms. Levitt said, examining the Toronto for adult children of Holocaust have an automatic sense of trust, and framed pictures in her Forest Hill home. First published in the National Post FRENCH RAILROAD SUED OVER HOLOCAUST against the railroad, half of them from sur- Wildmann, 76, of Menlo Park, was freed famed French Nazi hunters Serge and BY MARY PAPENFUSS vivors who now live in the United States. from a French camp and taken to a chil- Beate Klarsfeld, wrote in Le Monde news- “This is a critical issue for the French — dren’s home. His parents also died at paper following the June decision that the rnest Hirsch was a scared 9-year- and the world,” said Corinne Auschwitz. The day he left them, he said, deportations were an “authoritative act of old in a French children’s home the E Hershkovitch, one of the Paris attorneys “I remember sitting on a truck with other state from which the SNCF could not last time he heard from his mother. involved. “It’s not only an issue of money, kids. My mother was standing below, crying.” shrink.” The boy had been rescued from the but one of responsibility. What role did the The path was cleared for the latest law- or Abe Dresdner, 78, of Brooklyn, French internment camp Rivesaltes in SNCF play in this crime?” suits with a ruling in June concerning rel- whose family managed to survive 1941, but his parents were still trapped F The case could be one of the last signif- atives of European Parliament member the war, the “French were as bad as the there when his mother, Lisa Kirchheimer, icant legal actions on behalf of Holocaust Alain Lipietz, who were shipped to a tran- Gestapo.” French police and rail workers wrote that they were about to be moved. survivors, many of whom have already sit hub outside “stole everything from us except the “She said not to worry; that we would died of old age. Germany and German Paris, but were freed clothes on our backs,” he said. see each other again. She said she loved businesses have paid billions of dollars — by the Allies. Others in the suit, like Wildmann, are me,” recalled Hirsch, a retired operations much of it the result of court cases — in The judges held more ambivalent about the culpability of research analyst who lives in Orinda. insurance claims, restitution for seized that SNCF adminis- the French railway, but believe the litiga- Shortly after Hirsch got that letter, his property and bank accounts, as well as trators failed to tion may serve to shed light on the issue. parents were forced onto a train headed compensation to slave laborers and vic- protest the trans- “I don’t know how much freedom the for death. When they arrived at Auschwitz, tims’ families. European insurance com- ports — and failed to French (running the SNCF) had to “they were marched directly panies and Swiss prove they were choose,” he said. to the gas chambers and banks have been under duress not to A similar case against the French rail- killed,” he said. sued for failing to protest. The ruling road was filed several years ago in New Hirsch, 75, is one of more honor obligations to said the railway New York attorney York, but the U.S. Supreme Court ruled than 100 Americans who survivors of their moved family mem- Harriet Tamen is seek- that the French agency was protected by have joined a groundbreak- Jewish customers. bers in a manner ing restitution for stolen the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. ing legal action here against property for 500 clients. Four years ago, the “incompatible with Ironically, the SNCF does not have the the French railway Société U.S. Supreme human dignity,” without food, water or same protection in France. American law Nationale des Chemins de Court threw out a “minimal hygienic conditions.” It also does allow exceptions, including suits Fer (SNCF), which transport- 1999 California law noted that Lipietz’s relatives were trans- seeking restitution for stolen property. ed thousands of Jews during Ernest Hirsch of Orinda, one of more requiring insurance ported, as deportees typically were at the than 100 Americans participating in a “That means you can sue in a U.S. court World War II to transit hubs firms licensed to do time, packed into a cattle car — yet the French suit, was rescued from a French if Mommy lost her handbag when she was on their way to their deaths. business in the SNCF billed for passengers at third-class internment camp as a boy. forced on the train in France, but not if she It’s the same state-owned state to account for rates, and continued to charge the French lost her life at Auschwitz,” said New York train system that now carries commuters World War II-era policies they or their affil- government even after the country was attorney Harriet Tamen, who is represent- to their jobs. Some 76,000 Jews in France iates sold in Europe from 1920 to 1945. liberated from Nazi domination. ing some 500 clients against the SNCF in he Toulouse finding is the first such The suits have deeply divided the were transported to Nazi death camps; a class action case seeking restitution for ruling against the French republic or French Jewish community. SNCF officials only 2,500 of them survived. T stolen property. In a first-of-its-kind ruling last summer, one of its agencies. In 2001, French argue that the agency had no choice but Meanwhile, time for payback is running 62 years after the war ended, an adminis- banks reached a multimillion-dollar settle- to follow the orders of the Germans and out for Holocaust survivors. trative tribunal in Toulouse, France, fined ment with Holocaust victims in a suit the collaborationist Vichy government. It’s “My baby sister is one of the youngest the SNCF and the French republic brought by a New York law firm. The a position supported by some French his- survivors and she’s already 67,” said $80,000 for their role in transporting a French government also voluntarily pays torians, who have also expressed concern Dresdner. “We’ve been waiting a long time.” Jewish family. The railway is appealing. a pension to current and former French about a backlash against the Jewish com- French attorneys have filed the first residents orphaned by Nazi atrocities. munity. First published in the San Francisco wave of more than 200 new complaints Like Hirsch, retired engineer Manfred Paris attorney Arno Klarsfeld, son of Chronicle March/April 2007- Adar/Nisan 5767 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 7 FIGHT AGAINST TIME TO PRESERVE AUSCHWITZ was not built to last. The concentration The ash pits, where the remains of that decaying original artifacts should be BY CHRIS JOHNSON, JTA camp known as Auschwitz was actually many victims were dumped, lie open to replaced by copies. two camps, and both are suffering serious the elements and the ground, trampled by Faded and frail, two metric tons of hair ver 60 years of winter snow, sum- problems. visitors. The area around them is studded shorn from victims is piled up in one cell Omer drought and millions of visitors with what look like tiny white stones. block: once blonde plaits, black pony-tails “NOT STONES — BONES” have taken a heavy toll on the former Nazi “Not stones — bones,” explains Jarek and auburn curls, it is gradually decaying death camp. uschwitz I, a stone and brick-built Mensfelt, a linguist and senior guide at the and now looks like gray wire wool. Just as survivors visiting the camp dwin- Polish military base used by the museum. “Tiny fragments of human A CRY OF DESPAIR dle each year, so time is bearing down on Nazis to house Polish political prisoners, bones. It is terrible that tourists can tread the prison buildings, the rusting barbed- was hastily enlarged on human remains.” he museum has had more luck with wire fencing and rem- with forced labor ,using Cywinski is acutely aware of the defi- Tits 80,000 shoes, mostly odd. Chief nants of the gas cham- the cheapest possi- ciencies of the museum, but is con- conservationist Rafal Pioro and his staff of bers left behind when ble materials after strained by money and the physical limita- 38 invited school children to help clean the Germans fled in Germany invaded tions imposed by the scale of the site. and polish some of them. January 1945. Poland in 1939. But there are so many, most still have to HAIR AND SHOES Evidence of the vic- Auschwitz II Birkenau, be stored in a warehouse without air-con- tims — hair, specta- two miles away, was a arious grandiose ideas — including ditioning. Slowly, most are falling apart. cles, children’s toys specially built killing Vone for a giant dome — have been “The work is endless and painstaking and other belongings factory thrown up in rejected on grounds of cost, and because and can be heart-rending,” said Pioro. — is also falling to 1943 for the mass any major construc- “When we were working pieces, eaten away by The main entrance to Birkenau viewed from murder of Jews, gyp- tion would destroy on the children’s shoes, insects and mildew, its the unloading ramp. sies, homosexuals some of the area some of us were crying all disappearance giving and other minorities. and alter it. the time.” slow support to those who try to deny the Linked directly to Europe’s railway net- Smaller-scale Workers at Auschwitz Holocaust ever happened. work by a special siding to speed up the enclosures to pro- are struggling to slow the Unless conservation is stepped up, murders, the Nazis used it to expedite tect the buildings aging of the camp and there may soon be little left of the biggest their plans for a “Final Solution” to “the would be possible, keep it as a lesson on the graveyard in Europe, where up to 1.5 mil- Jewish problem.” but even these evils of anti-Semitism. lion men, women and children, mostly Parts of the Birkenau site are built from would be expensive They aim, in the words Jews, were slaughtered. the remains of demolished Polish villages and would have to of a plaque near the gas Now, new management at the camp, and stable blocks and these have sur- be agreed by all the chambers, to keep covering 470 acres on two sites near vived. But many other buildings have groups that protect Auschwitz as “a cry of Oswiecim in southern Poland, is acceler- already disappeared. the site. Millions of “selected” Jews and other despair and a warning to ating work and hiring more staff to slow Most wooden huts were removed after “Tens of millions unwanted humans (children, elderly, crip- humanity.” the deterioration and save the site as a the war for use as temporary shelters. And of dollars, more, pled and others unfit for slave labor) were Israel Gutman, a former lesson for future generations. the strongest of the buildings, the con- would be needed to gassed and cremated in Auschwitz’ infa- Auschwitz prisoner and mous crematoria. “If there is one place in the world that crete gas chambers and crematoriums, do all the work,” adviser to the Yad should be kept as a reminder of the con- were blown up by the guards before their said Cywinski. But money is not the main Vashem holocaust institute in Israel, is sequences of racism and intolerance, it is retreat. These ruins have collapsed, problem: the Polish government has pro- determined the camp will be conserved as this one,” said Piotr Cywinski, who took undermined by rising ground water, flood- vided large sums and there are a number long as possible, whatever the cost. over as director of Auschwitz in ing and erosion. of international donors. “There are still people who claim the September. “But it gets more difficult The area around the gas chambers is Time itself is the enemy, eroding the site Holocaust never took place,” he said. every year.” cordoned off with tape, but still accessible and its contents. “Auschwitz must be preserved for as long One of the many problems facing to the public, some of whom clamber over “Conservationists are like doctors: we as possible, because it gives those people Cywinski and his 260 staff members at the the rubble. Some visitors even remove can extend life, but not for eternity,” said a chance to go there, to see the real gas site, now a museum, is that Auschwitz relics and artifacts. Cywinski, who opposes any suggestion chambers.” HOW BELGIUM SACRIFICED ITS JEWS TO THE NAZIS example, no such project has been not at all certain she would have received ccording to Van Doorslaer, the BY ADI SCHWARTZ launched. this honor, as her intervention on behalf of ABelgians saw the Jews as foreign- Machman explains that one of the rea- a small group of Jews with Belgian citizen- ers, as 95 percent of the community did he first question that must be asked Tis, why this has taken so long. About sons the Belgians held off from dealing ship could have been seen as giving the not have Belgian citizenship. “This action three weeks ago, 62 years after the end of with the issue was the fact that King Germans license to deport all the rest has no explanation apart from that it was World War II, a committee of historians Leopold III remained in the country during without citizenship. an intentional decision that derived from appointed by the Belgian government the German occupation, In total, 25,000 Jews were the fact that the Jews were considered published a comprehensive report on the unlike the Belgian gov- killed, 44 percent of the total foreigners,” states the report. Van role of the Belgian authorities in the perse- ernment, which went number of Jews living in Doorslaer says much of the Belgian elite cution and deportation of the Jews during into exile in London. This Belgium on the eve of the was tainted with xenophobia and anti- the war. In other words, the committee fact gave rise to ques- German occupation. Semitism and the war led them to prefer was appointed to investigate the extent of tions about his collabo- The title given to the 1,100- “the Belgian interest,” which ostensibly did the Belgian state’s collaboration with Nazi ration with the Germans; page report is “La Belgique not include the protection of Jews, by Germany. he relinquished his Docile” (“Obedient Belgium”), virtue of the fact that they were non- “Most Belgians are unaware of the grav- crown after the war to and its conclusions state Belgians. Paradoxically, states the report, ity of the persecution experienced by the his 20-year-old son, explicitly that “the Belgian even though the Jews were the most obvi- country’s Jews,” stated the Belgian Baudouin. state adopted an obedient ous group harmed by the German enemy, in its 2002 decision to establish he king problem” approach, and collaborated the Belgian authorities related to the the committee. “Why was it necessary for “Tremained a very in a manner unbefitting a Jews as though they were themselves half a century to elapse in order for us to sensitive issue in democratic country, in vari- the enemies. discuss this part of our past? It is the Belgium, and historians ous but critical areas, in a In the wake of this registration came a Senate’s duty to preserve the memory of preferred, therefore, to devastating policy toward the long series of instructions and orders, the the genocide, relying on facts that cannot concentrate on the Jewish population.” aim of which was to separate the Jewish be questioned. This is our obligation to the German occupiers and The editor of the report, population from the rest of society. In coming generations.” not to deal with the King Leopold III with his first historian Rudi Van Doorslaer, December 1940, all of the Jews who held What, in truth, can possibly explain this Belgian collaborators. In wife Astrid. says he and his colleagues official positions were fired from their jobs. delay? Professor Dan Machman, chief the matter of the Jews, says Machman, identified three crucial moments that In July 1941, the Belgian internal affairs historian of Yad Vashem and a specialist the Belgians emphasized acts of saving marked the Belgian authorities’ attitude secretary-general ordered the word “Jew” on the Holocaust in Belgium and Holland, the Jews and participation in the anti-Nazi toward the Jews. The first was in the added to identifying documents. From that says Belgium began dealing with the underground. autumn of 1940, about six months after moment on, states the report, “the transi- Holocaust later than other nations, but its King Leopold’s mother, Queen Elizabeth Belgium surrendered. In November of that tion from passive collaboration to active state-commissioned report is an excep- of Bavaria, even received the title of year, the occupation regime ordered collaboration was accomplished with tion to the rule. He says that such reports Righteous Gentile from Yad Vashem in Belgium to register all the Jews in the great rapidity.” In October 1941, the have only been published in Romania, 1964 for her intervention on behalf of sev- country. In terms of the Belgian authorities declared illegal those text- Switzerland and Lichtenstein thus far, and eral hundred Belgian Jews with Belgian Constitution, this order was illegal, as it books that were edited by Jews, and in similar research is currently underway in citizenship (a small minority in the Jewish discriminated against citizens according December 1941, Jewish children were the Baltic states. However, in France, for population). Today, says Machman, it is to their religion. (Continued on page 14) Page 8 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE March/April 2007- Adar/Nisan 5767 GLADYS HALPERN RITA LEVY Resistance and Courage Remembering the Past, in the Face of the Holocaust Ensuring the Future he story of Gladys Halpern is one of courage eeply committed to Israel, Holocaust remem- Tand truly speaks of a Woman’s Legacy to her Dbrance, and Jewish cultural preservation, Rita family and the cause of Remembrance. Gladys is the Levy and her family have been active in San daughter of Sala and Ephraim Landau, and was born Francisco, New York, Washington DC and Jerusalem. in the town of Zolkiew, near Lvov, Poland. They were founding members of the United States Initially imprisoned in the Zolkiew Ghetto, Gladys Holocaust Museum in Washington DC and the and her mother escaped and were hidden by a fami- Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City. Her ly who has been recognized as Righteous Among the father was a Nations at Yad Member of the Vashem, Jerusalem. Board of the Sadly, her father per- American ished when the Society of Yad Zolkiew Ghetto was Vashem and the liquidated on March American 25, 1943. Gladys is Gathering of one of only a few sur- Holocaust vivors on both sides Survivors. Rita of her family. She sur- and her mother vived along with her were founding members of the International Women’s mother and two of her Division of YIVO. Rita was a founding member of the mother’s sisters. San Francisco Jewish Community Federation After the war ended, Working Women’s Forum and served on the Strategic Gladys and her mother made their way to Western Planning Committee of the Brandeis-Hillel Day Poland. During this time she met, Sam, who would School. later become her husband. Sam and Gladys were Rita’s husband, David, is currently Vice President of married in Germany in 1946. Gladys and Sam the Board of the Sid Jacobson Jewish Community Halpern currently reside in Hillside, New Jersey. They Center. There she has been involved in cultural activ- have four adult sons and are proud grandparents and ities, such as the Literary Committee and Jewish Film great grandparents. Festival and chaired the Israeli Crafts Fairs. The ladys Halpern is active in numerous Jewish Levy’s are active supporters of Hadassah, UJA, their communal organizations in the United States G , Temple Beth Sholom of Roslyn, including and Israel. Since its inception, she has been a mem- ber of the American Society for Yad Vashem Spring its Yom Hashoah Committee, and, of course, Yad Luncheon Committee and a member of the Annual Vashem. Tribute Dinner Committee. In addition, Gladys, GUEST SPEAKER KEVIN HAWORTH er children, Rebecca and Matthew, have visited together with her husband Sam, are Benefactors of HIsrael many times, including a UJA-led mission Yad Vashem, and have been honored by Israel evin Haworth was born in on the occasion of Israel’s 50th anniversary, where Bonds for their support of Holocaust Remembrance KBrooklyn, NY in 1971. He earned they danced in celebration with their grandparents. Activities. She is an active member of many Israel- his B.A. in English from Vassar College Matthew has participated in the 2004 and 2005 related and communal organizations, including the and his M.F.A. in Fiction Writing from Maccabi Games. Rebecca attended the 2005 Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC, the Jewish Arizona State University. International Gathering of Holocaust Survivors, Heritage Museum in New York City, the Jewish His first novel, The Discontinuity of Children and Grandchildren at Yad Vashem in National Fund (JNF), American Israel Public Affairs Small Things, was awarded the Samuel Jerusalem. She has participated and performed at Committee (AIPAC), Hadassah and the Jewish Goldberg Prize for best Jewish fiction numerous Yom Hashoah ceremonies in Washington Federation of Central New Jersey, Jewish Family by a writer under 40. It was also recog- DC and in New York. She has also performed with the Services of Central New Jersey, and Israel Bonds. nized as runner-up for the 2006 Dayton Folksbiene Yiddish Theater’s “Kids and Yiddish.” Through their involvement in these many organiza- Literary Peace Prize. A two-time resident Rita has an MBA from Columbia University. She tions, Gladys and Sam have shown their family the of the Vermont Studio Center, he is also a and her husband work together in the family’s real importance of supporting the cause of Remembrance winner of the David Dornstein Prize for estate business. for generations to come. Young Jewish Writers and the Permafrost She accepts this award in memory of her late father, Gladys and Sam Halpern are benefactors of Yad Fiction Prize. Nathan Katz (z”l) and in honor of her mother, Sima Vashem, Jerusalem and through their support made He currently resides in Athens, Ohio with his wife, Rabbi Danielle Katz. She has always been proud to be their daugh- possible the refurbishment of the Avenue of the Leshaw, and their two children, Zev and Ruthie. He teaches writing ter and is committed to continuing their legacy through Righteous Among The Nations. and literature at Ohio University. her own family. A TALE OF THREE WOMEN – AND A LOST FAMILY managed to bring the toddler out to her Although she tried to retrieve them, she Stanislawa; someone remembered they SCHELLY TALALAY DARDASHTI, and returned to the ghetto. was always told to come tomorrow, and lived in a nearby village, and they ran to THE JERUSALEM POST Chana told the family that she had given understood they would not be returned. look, but the nanny had just left. “We Masha to the nanny, along with money, The nanny, who never married, had a searched and searched and found noth- on-stop sleuthing produces a story jewelry and a pair of candlesticks with her photograph of Masha’s parents, told ing,” recalled Avidar. Nthat twists at every turn: Wilno, brothers’ names and American addresses Masha she was Jewish and that no one Not finding anyone alive, he and his sib- Warsaw, the Dead Sea, Tel Aviv, a hidden inside. had survived. lings came to Palestine on the Exodus Righteous Gentile, a hidden slip of paper Masha tells the Maria married emigration ship, and his sister Dina in a candlestick, the Exodus, American story in her cousin and Stanislawa Fajnsztejn Srolovich submitted Yad uncles, an illustrious rabbinical family and Danny Avidar’s went to live with Vashem Pages of Testimony (PoT). more. Kiryat Ono home: her in Zielonej Marianna had discovered a PoT indicat- Enter Warsaw teacher Marianna Stanislawa went to Gory, 60 kilome- ing that Dina Fajnsztajn Srolowicz of Haifa Hoszowska, 23, who volunteers to assist one brother, who ters from Berlin. had completed pages for Chana and members of the Children of the Holocaust refused to help. She died in 1990 Jakub (her first cousin); for her own par- Society; Maria Kowalska (Masha Another brother at 88, and in ents Mordechai and Miriam Fajnsztajn, Fajnsztejn), 68, a toddler saved by her wouldn’t or couldn’t 1992, was pro- siblings Rywka and Batia; Jakub’s par- Righteous Gentile nanny Stanislawa help, but sent her claimeda ents, Abraham and Ida Fajnsztajn; and Butkiewicz; and former Londoner, to a cousin in a for- Righteous her uncle, philosophy professor Daniel researcher Patricia (Trisher) Wilson, 59, est 23 kilometers Gentile. Fajnsztajn, wife Rachel and three chil- of Ra’anana. away, who built a Danny was in dren. Danny Avidar and his cousin Masha Fajnsztajn. In September 1941, two-year-old Masha special shelter for several camps: n her October 27, 2006 posting to a Fajnsztejn and her parents Yakub and Masha if the Germans came. A priest Kaiserwald (Riga), Stuthof near Danzig, IJewish genealogy discussion group, Chana (Zusmanovicz) went into the Wilno gave her a new name – Maria Budkiewicz on a two-and-a-half-month death march to Marianna wrote, “Maria didn’t know about ghetto with their extended families, includ- – and papers, and they lived in the forest Stettin, and was saved by the Russians. her [Dina] and the family members until ing her cousin, Daniel (Fajnsztejn) Avidar, for three years. After the war, he and his siblings returned yesterday,” adding that Maria was travel- then aged nine. Chana made contact with Stanislawa likely gave the candlesticks home to see if anyone had survived: No ing to Israel the following day with the Masha’s nanny, Stanislawa, somehow and jewelry to the priest who helped her. one had. They asked about Masha and (Continued on page 9) March/April 2007- Adar/Nisan 5767 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 9

SURVIVORS’ DESCENDANTS A TALE OF THREE WOMEN – AND A LOST FAMILY DEALING WITH IMPACT (Continued from page 8) take me to the Dead Sea Friday morning cousins. Children of the Holocaust Society. “Do any to see Masha. I can’t wait until Monday.” Who would use Zusmanovich in the STEPHANIE L. FREID, of you know Ms. Dina Srolovicz or anyone He says that when he was asked about golden medina? thought Wilson and SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE from her family?” Maria, she said, would be his family, he always said “My family is my began looking for shortened names. happy to meet Dina or her children. cousin Masha and she is two years old. Naiman or Hyman Zusman popped up in have nightmares of being chased by ilson got to work and located two That’s all I remembered.” 1906, going to his grandfather Leib. “Iguards into the barbed wire fences. WPoTs from 1957 and 1982. She They went to the hotel and found the Unfortunately, Leib or Hyman/Naiman Or I’m hiding in cupboards from the Nazis. turned to Bezeq Online, but Dina wasn’t Polish group by the water. He asked if cannot be traced, nor Socher. Sometimes I visualize how I would survive listed. In Haifa, a short list of Srolowicz they knew Masha. Aron’s trail was easy to follow: he is if forced into a desperate situation. It has appeared and she decided to call each “Yes, see those women coming out of Zusman in Milwaukee, naturalized 1905, a molded my entire identity.” one. the water? One is Masha.” “minister,” married to Hattie, four children. Liora Blum, a South Africa native, is sit- One man wasn’t related, but knew Dina Avidar walked up to a woman, and said, In 1920, in the same neighborhood, he’s ting in a dimly lit Tel Aviv apartment, and her husband, with whom he had “You are Masha!” a “Jewish pastor,” married to Yocheved speaking, along with others like her. They served in the army. He remembered they “How do you know?” with more children. didn’t directly experience the camps or had a shop. He retrieved a 1999 phone “You’re the image of your father.” In 1930, she found son John, and son ghettos, but as second-generation book with the number. “I was two, you were nine. How do you Samuel in Illinois. She looked for Aron for Holocaust survivors, they are traumatized Wilson called, no one answered; she know?” hours, until she saw Ziesman, “rabbi of a by their parents’ pasts. assumed the shop had closed. She e- “I remember,” said Avidar. church,” married to Jane, with the same Intergenerational trauma is being mailed Marianna that she would call the “There were no words,” he later children. Could family still be alive in passed along from immediate Holocaust cemetery to see and ask about Wisconsin? Wilson went to the Online survivors to their offspring, says Chani next of kin. The cemetery con- White pages.There were Mendel, Danny, Oron, director of Israel’s Central Region firmed Dina had died; her daugh- and Isidore. Support Organization for Second and ter Elana had arranged the funer- She called Mendel; a feeble voice Third Generation Holocaust Survivors. al, and provided the number. She answered. And, according to Oron, festering issues sent the number to Marianna, “Are you Mendel, son of Aron of stemming from parents’ time spent in hid- who she immediately called from Ashmiany?” ing or in the camps and ghettos surface at Poland. Elana answered, but nei- “Absolutely right – but you should call the group sessions she moderates. ther knew the other’s language. my brother Isidor in Milwaukee.” “Holocaust survivors endured incredible She was suspicious, reluctant to Wilson picked a random number, reach- humiliation and struggle for survival; there give information, and hung up. ing dentist Dr. Richard Zusman’s voice was starvation, violence, fear and horror Meanwhile, Marianna had mail. She left a detailed message, asking during the war and then, after being liber- found another PoT from 1982, him to e-mail, call or fax. At 1:15 a.m., ated, they came to new countries to start signed in English by Fruma Nir, Wilson gave up and fell into bed. It’s over. The second generation experienced for her mother Berta (Batia) Purim and the first e-mail is from the den- a mix of shame for their parents’ lacking Fajnstajn – Dina’s sister – daugh- tist, who confirms his father Isidore, 92, is language and social skills mixed with guilt ter of Mordechai and Miriam. Aron’s son. Coincidentally, his sister over what the parents had endured,” Oron Wilson contacted Kibbutz Shelly Isaacs is now visiting Beit explains. Ma’anit, Fruma’s residence, and From left: Shelly Isaacs, Patricia Wilson, Masha Shemesh – here’s her phone number. Illustrating the point, New Jersey native the secretary confirmed she was Fajnsztajn, Hall of Names Director Alexander Avraham “I hoped she wouldn’t think this was a Shirley Karsevar says, “Growing up in a there. “This is about the and Daniel Avidar in the Hall of Names at Yad Vashem. Purimshpiel,” thought Wilson as she household with the energy of parents who Holocaust and I don’t want to dialed. went through severe trauma was totally upset her,” said Wilson. “Are there chil- recalled. “We put our arms around each Isaacs was stunned as she listened to different than other households. When I dren?” other and cried.” Wilson’s details. A call to her mother con- was a teenager, a friend showed me pic- “Yes, her son, Ohad, who is working in They talked for nine hours: “The hardest firmed that Aron was one of two brothers. tures of her father’s bar mitzvah party — the fields now. Here are both phone num- part was telling her how her parents had On Tuesday , Isaacs was returning an upscale, black tie affair. I did the math bers.” Before she could call, the phone perished,” said Avidar. to Milwaukee, and as Danny Avidar and and suddenly realized that at the very rang – it was Ohad. “He was so excited He said everyone would come to the Tel Masha were going to Yad Vashem that same time her teenage parents were that there was a possibility – that after all Aviv hotel on Monday night: his sisters, morning, they arranged to meet and take dancing to Benny Goodman, mine were these years, someone might be alive,” the children, the grandchildren. pictures. starving in the camps.” she recalls. “Where is Masha? I’ll go get Avidar told Wilson, “What can I say to At the Hall of Names, there was Avidar, Karsevar’s exposure to her parents’ her and bring her to my mother.” you? There are no words for what you arms around Masha, and Shelly Isaacs trauma came early; she remembers her Wilson e-mailed Marianna for the itiner- have done. All I can say is that you will be with Danny’s sister Rachel. mother began talking about life during ary, and the phone rang again. An older in my heart forever.” The family visited the Remembrance World War II when Karsevar was 4. “I’ve man said, in English, “My name is Danny he Wilson household settled down Hall, and the walls of Righteous Gentiles. met people whose parents never talked Avidar and my great-nephew just called Tagain. Marianna e-mailed about a Avidar pointed out Stanislawa’s name and about it and I’m like: ‘Lucky you! They me. Fruma is my niece, and the page of Polish newspaper story and that Polish told how she had saved Masha. spared you. They gave you your child- testimony was for my late sister. I cannot TV wanted to make a documentary, and Masha came from Poland, feels herself hood and let you have your life,’ “ believe what you are telling me –- my she had presented a program about Catholic and thought the family in Israel Karsevar tells the group. cousin is alive?” Masha’s experience. Once again, Wilson wouldn’t accept her. It was explained that London natives Nina Hecht and Tricia “Yes, I believe we have found your thought the story was finished. she was Jewish. Her grandchildren have Wermuth co-founded Second Generation cousin Masha.” In February, Avidar called about even been to Israel via the Birthright-Taglit Israel in English in 2005. Both women’s “That’s impossible. Not a chance. The Masha’s March trip, that Polish TV is mak- program. They said they feel Catholic, but fathers survived the camps, but lost par- last time I saw her was in 1941.” ing a documentary, has filmed in Poland in their hearts Jewish because their moth- ents and siblings. “Nothing is impossible,” Wilson replied. and is coming to Israel. “You must come,” er is Jewish. Masha understands that she As both can attest, children of survivors “How old are you, Danny?” he tells Wilson. is Jewish. often suffer from a sense of lost child- “In my 70s.” When this writer called Avidar to confirm Wilson is at her computer every day hood, tremendous pressure to achieve, “I want you to sit down.” an interview with Masha at his home, he except Shabbat, trying to connect people and guilt. “Where in Poland does Masha live?” said “There’s something I’ve never told around the world. “I go to bed every night In a majority of households, survivor “That’s why I’m asking you to sit down. anyone,” and told about the candlestick and say ‘Thank you for another day, for parents didn’t discuss their experiences. Masha isn’t in Poland, she’s here, in with the names of the brothers hidden helping me, and let me help someone else “Pasts were shrouded in silence. In cases Israel.” inside. Chana had said, “If we don’t sur- tomorrow,’” she says. where entire families perished, a silent Utter silence. vive, there are American relatives who will “The circle is closing,” says Avidar, parent — the sole link to lineage – meant “Where is she? I want to go to her. I take her.” whose great-grandfather was Chief Rabbi unanswered questions and gaping holes want to bring her. I’m going to get my car.” I called Wilson with these new clues and of Hamburg, and grandfather was a rabbi for the next generation,” Oron explains. “I don’t know yet, but I’m going to find she immediately started tracking the in Koenigsberg. He rapidly sketches a “The children feel tremendous guilt for not out.” brothers, utilizing online resources. family tree for Wilson, who’s now looking knowing about their roots.” Marianna e-mails that the group is at the Chana Zusmanowicz Fajnsztajn came for clues to Meier in Paris; Yosef in Stephen Smith, co-founder of Britain’s Dead Sea, and Wilson calls the hotel. But from Ashmiany (50 miles from Wilno). She London; and Galia, an pharma- Holocaust Museum, and an expert on Masha speaks neither Hebrew nor had two brothers who went to America. cist. Other children studied at the Mir genocide, says, “The problem is one of English and Wilson cannot talk in Polish The immigration doors closed in 1923, so Yeshiva, at the university in Odessa. humanity. Genocide never happens by or Yiddish, so a friend who speaks English they must have arrived before. Chana The Polish cameraman asked Wilson chance; it is slow, deliberate, and always translates. was born in 1914; presumably, the broth- for help as they left Yad Vashem. “My preventable. It is important we remember “I’ll return to Tel Aviv on Monday and fly ers were older. wife’s family is Jewish, an uncle came to all the victims ... To ensure that the racism to Poland on Tuesday,” she says. Wilson went to stevemorse.org, and Israel. Can you help me find him?” She and victimization committed during the “Your relatives are anxious. They can’t searched for New York arrivals. Two fit the gave him the websites for JewishGen, for Holocaust and other genocides are nei- wait until Monday and want to see you details. Aron Zusnamowitsch arrived in Yad Vashem and other essential sites, as ther forgotten nor repeated.” now. May I give them your number?” 1902 from Ashmiany, married, a cantor. he scribbled them on an envelope. Faced with Holocaust denial and Iranian Avidar calls the hotel. A short time later, The other was Socher (Yissachar) As he got into the car, he said sadly, threats to eradicate Israel, Second he calls Wilson, adding that he suddenly Zusmanovitz, arrived 1906, single, age “You know, even today Polish people Generation Survivors are alarmed over a remembered his Polish. “My daughter will 17, from Ashmiany, going to Lewin don’t like Jews.” potential repeat. Page 10 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE March/April 2007- Adar/Nisan 5767 REPORTREPORT FROMFROM YADYAD VASHEMVASHEM SON OF SAVIORS OF A JEWISH GIRL “THEY DON’T TALK ENOUGH ACCEPTS HOLOCAUST AWARD said she did it because it was the right ABOUT THE SOBIBOR ESCAPE“ BY KORIE WILKINS, FREE PRESS thing to do. They had to do it.” About a third of the three million Jews The Israeli consul, Baruch Binah, said ally Czubatyj always heard the BY AMIRAM BARKAT AND who lived in the Soviet Union were killed the Czubatyj family took a great risk in story of how his parents saved the in World War II. A considerable number of W harboring Rapaport, who was later reunit- YULIE KHROMCHENKO life of a young Jewish girl during World these were soldiers serving in the Red ed with her sister and moved to Israel War II. n an unusual documentation project Army, but hundreds of thousands were after the war. They could have been killed But the heroic efforts of his parents, Iaunched five months ago, more than murdered by the Nazis, who conquered if the girl’s true identity was discovered. Danyla and Rostyslawa, became all the 1,000 elderly immigrants in assisted living Ukraine, Belarus and western Russia. ”We remember those who have commit- more real when he accepted an award facilities have provided testimony about Dr. Guy Miron of the International ted the crimes,” he said. “But we also from the Israeli Consul General on their their experiences in World War II. Jewish Institute for Holocaust Research at Yad remember those few who rose to the high- behalf. His parents are credited with risk- Agency Chairman Ze’ev Bielski submitted Vashem says that relatively little data has est human level of courage and benevo- ing their lives to save Hela Rapaport dur- the first batch of testimonies to Yad been collected on the Holocaust in these lence-like your parents did.” ing the Nazi occupation of Ukraine in the Vashem Chairman Avner Shalev. regions: “It stems first of all from the fact Czubatyj was given a certificate and a 1940s. Officials at the Holocaust Memorial that the murder there was perpetrated in a medal, as his parents were given the title Authority said that the new testimonies ”My mother would have loved to see this very short period and through the method day,” said Czubatyj. She died last of “Righteous Among the Nations,” the of mass executions in killing February. His father is also deceased. highest award given to non-Jews by the pits. The second reason is A Jewish friend asked Czubatyj’s parents Israeli government and the Yad Vashem that most of the Jews who in 1942, asking for help sheltering the Holocaust Memorial. Rabbi Charles survived from those areas teenage girl. Czubatyj said his mother Rosenzveig, founder of the Holocaust lived behind the Iron Curtain.” could not refuse. Memorial Center in Farmington Hills, said ome 6,500 elderly folks The Rapaport family had been expelled the Czubatyjs become the sixth people in Slive today in Amigur from their home in the city of Radechov in Michigan given the honor. housing and 90 percent of the Ukraine. In 1944, the Czubatyj family left Ukraine these are new immigrants ”My parents, to me, always seemed very to escape , settling in from the former Soviet Union. meek and mild,” said Czubatyj. “I wouldn’t Michigan in 1950. Amigur director Yuval have thought my parents would do some- ”This is such a huge honor,” he said. “It Frankel says the testimony campaign was spurred by thing like this. But they did. My mother means so much to my family.” random conversations with Group portrait of people who took part in the uprising of immigrants during VE Day Sobibor (picture taken in 1944) celebrations. “This is the HANA’S SUITCASE have great research value, especially most important holiday in the year for because they come from areas in the for- immigrants from the former Soviet Union,” RECEIVES YAD VASHEM AWARD mer Soviet Union about which there has Frankel says. “At every such event, we tion at the centre, received the suitcase, been relatively little information regarding would hear stories from the immigrants BY JENNY HAZAN, CJN along with a baby shoe, a little sock, a the Holocaust. about their experiences during the war, baby sweater and a can of Zyklon B gas, Siemion Rosenfeld, 84, from Belarus, and we thought these things must be doc- eorge Brady never imagined he from the Auschwitz Museum in Poland in joined the Red Army in 1940. In August, umented before it’s too late.” Indeed, two would accept an award for chil- G March 2000. 1941, he was taken prisoner by the of the immigrants died just days after writ- dren’s Holocaust literature at the Yad “Although there is a Holocaust museum Germans, sent to a concentration camp in ing their testimony. Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem. in Hiroshima, Holocaust education is a Minsk, and from there to the Sobibor Frankel says the immigrants were reluc- But the Czechoslovakian-born survivor of very new subject in Japan. In the history death camp in Poland. “They don’t talk tant to speak Auschwitz did just that in October of last textbooks, the Holocaust is only described enough about the escape from Sobibor,” about the year. in a few lines. As a result, most students he says, “it was like the Warsaw Ghetto Holocaust, or Along with his 22-year-old daughter, in Japan have never even heard the word Uprising, only Sobibor was wiped off the “the catastro- Lara Hana, and Tokyo- ‘Holocaust’ before,” says face of the earth, and now there is a based teacher Fumiko phe” as they Ishioka, who estimates that plowed field there.” Ishioka, Brady accepted the term it. “Bear since the center in Tokyo Rosenfeld is one of 80 POWs who took 2006 Yad Vashem Award in mind that closed three years ago, part in the uprising. Only five survived, on behalf of first-time the private dis- she has been able to bring and live in Israel. After the uprising, he hid Canadian author Karen aster of Soviet a traveling exhibit about out in Polish forests for 10 months, and in Levine for Hana’s Suitcase. Jews was sub- the Holocaust to more than 1944 returned to the Red Army. He was The 2002 book was sumed by the 200 schools in Japan, badly wounded in the course of his mili- selected from among 10 enormous reaching some 60,000 stu- tary service, and upon recovery, rejoined children’s books, which, price exacted dents. his platoon, which reached Berlin. “One of other than Hana’s Suitcase, by the war, ana’s Suitcase” the walls of the Reichstag bore my signa- were written originally in which took the “Hwas the natural ture,” he says proudly in his testimony. lives of 20 mil- Hebrew by Israeli authors. choice to win this award,” Sobibor chapel used as the Hana’s Suitcase is the Maria Katzap, 90, resides in an assisted lion Soviet citi- says Haim Gertner, direc- living facility in Be’er Sheva that belongs Lazarett for shooting elderly story of Brady’s younger sister, Hana, zens.” or infirm arrivals. Behind tor of teacher training at the International to Amigur, a Jewish Agency subsidiary. Many of the who, in 1942 at the age of 10, was killed School for Holocaust Studies at Yad this building the victims Katzap grew up on the Jewish farming immigrants at Auschwitz, and the Japanese educator Vashem. were shot into a long pit. collective, Emmet, that was established in who refused who told her story to the world. “Never in “One of the main pillars of the school’s the southern Ukraine by the worldwide initially to cooperate eventually changed my wildest imagination did I ever expect educational philosophy is that when you Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. In their minds, once they realized the impor- that this would happen,” says Brady, a are teaching about the Holocaust, you March, 1942, the Germans conquered the tance of testimony for future generations plumber in Toronto for more than 40 have to focus on one individual. You have area and, shortly thereafter, Katzap’s fam- and as part of the campaign against years. “Not just these awards, but this to save the soul of one person among the ily were executed. whole story – it’s like a dream.” pile of bodies. You have to see a face, and Holocaust denial. “Yad Vashem was pret- “When I fled the ghetto with my friend, I The award is the culmination of a story be involved with a particular person’s ty skeptical at first,” Frankel says, “but didn’t want to leave my sister behind,” she that began when Hana was murdered. story,” he says. when they saw what was involved, their recounts, “but she told me she has noth- The only thing the little girl left behind was “Not only does Hana’s Suitcase focus attitude changed completely, and recently ing to live for. She’s 36 and won’t be hav- a suitcase, on which was written her on one face, but it follows the process by they asked us to distribute to the immi- name, her birth date and the German which one educator came to discover that ing children and that I’m young and will grants 2,000 testimony pages, to try word waisenkind, which means orphan. face. The story is unbelievable. It’s inter- survive. ‘You have to go and tell what hap- through them to obtain new names of The mysterious suitcase found its way esting and it’s touching, and it’s very pened to us here,’ she said to me.” Jews who were killed in the Holocaust.” into the hands of Japanese school important. Only after she immigrated to Israel did she Frankel is calling on other public hous- teacher Fumiko Ishioka, co-ordinator of “Now that the generation of the sur- consent to tell her story in public. “I lived ing companies that provide assisted living the now-defunct Tokyo Holocaust vivors is disappearing, we have to give in a region where there were not many facilities for immigrants to join the initia- Education Resource Center. Ishioka, who tools to the next generation. This book is Jews and I was afraid of how my story tive. had written letters to several Holocaust an important educational tool that really would be received,” she says. Now she Yad Vashem is calling on anyone with museums around the world requesting presents the Holocaust in a touching and feels that she has complied with her sis- additional information to telephone 02- children’s artifacts for her modest collec- sensitive way,” Gertner says. ter’s order, albeit belatedly. 644-3752. March/April 2007- Adar/Nisan 5767 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 11 NEW HANDBOOK NAZI HUNTERS HELPS DESCENDENTS PICK UP THE TRAIL ONLINE Jerusalem office. “It helps me get up-to- RECLAIM NAZI LOOT BY OREN DORELL, USA TODAY date whereabouts on the current sus- pects.” he Nazis were masters at stealing owners by the Nazis, or sold at below- ill Gray was working as a student he questions that surround people art from Jewish collectors and deal- market prices to finance escapes. But intern at the Simon Wiesenthal T B identified as suspects are seen in ers. Recently, many works have finally more than that, the book provides a Center in Jerusalem when he decided to T been returned — but the legal path can be detailed, country-by-country look at the use the Internet to find fugitive Nazis. the case of Sandor Kepiro, an officer in a tricky. A new manual entitled “Nazi Looted laws in place intended to help descen- Within a few hours he found five, all liv- Hungarian police unit that rounded up and Art” aims to make restitution easier. dants get their art back — in effect, an ing in the USA. machine-gunned more than 1,000 Jews, In the painting, the grande dame of instruction manual for those dispossessed “To think of the horrible crimes that Serbs and Gypsies in Novi Sad, a impartiality embodies the unbiased rule of by the Nazis. these people committed,” said Gray, 24, a Yugoslav area occupied by Hungary in 1942. Kepiro was convicted in the mas- law: eyes bound, flowing Harvard student from Munster, Ind. “And sacre, but freed by Hungary’s fascist robe, scale dangling from to think that they were living in the United regime shortly after his trial in 1944. He her left hand. But Carl States for so long, so happily.” fled to Argentina. In 1946, the communist Spitzweg’s masterpiece The Nazis whom Gray found were government of Hungary tried him again in “Fiat Justitia,” which forms already known to the Justice Department. absentia, and sentenced him to 14 years. part of the German presi- Some had been deemed too ill to prose- He returned to Budapest in 1996 and has dent’s art collection, is any- cute, and Justice is taking a second look at the others, the center said. denied taking an active part in the execu- thing but a symbol of jus- tions. tice — quite the contrary. Gray’s use of Internet-based search engines and databases, such as voting Due to Operation: Last Chance, author- The piece was sold at a ities are now deciding whether he should cut-rate price by its Jewish records, comes at an important time. The Wiesenthal Center is making an intense be re-arrested. owner in the mid-1930s to push, known as “Operation: Last Zuroff says that over the years he has finance his escape attempt Chance,” to find fugitives of the Holocaust tracked down more than 2,000 people from . Seven and bring them to justice before they die. suspected of Holocaust crimes. He hopes decades later, his descen- The center, renowned for finding scores of that the new methods will help locate a dants have still not been ex-Nazis, is also seeking collaborators, notorious fugitive: Aribert Heim. compensated for its loss. “Architectural Capriccio,” by Bibiena Giuseppe Galli, will be Heim was a doctor at the Mauthausen returned to its rightful owner by the Courtauld Institute of Art in camp guards and leaders of paramilitary But that may soon and Buchenwald concentration camps the UK. groups who helped round up and kill Jews change. In recent years and others during the Holocaust. who was suspected of killing hundreds of there have been growing efforts to find “This book gives the victims the possibil- The effort has rolled across Europe and inmates. He slipped from U.S. detention and compensate families of art collectors ity to take legal action without having to collected hundreds of allegations and and was practicing gynecology in disappropriated by the Nazis during World hire a lawyer,” says Gunnar Schnabel, a names from Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Germany until 1962, when state prosecu- War II. And an important new contribution Berlin property lawyer who co-authored Poland, Romania, Austria, Hungary and tors issued a warrant for his arrest, and he to that project was revealed in Berlin the book with Monika Tatzkow, a Berlin Germany. This year, the program will disappeared. A reward of more than Tuesday: a new book called “Nazi Looted historian who specializes in tracking down expand to Argentina, Brazil and Chile. $250,000 has been offered for Heim, who Art: A Handbook to Art Restitution lost art. The suspects are all older than 80, so Zuroff believes is hiding in South America. Worldwide” — with Spitzweg’s “Justitia” “There have already been hundreds of any time saved by using the Internet is Gray says it should not matter that the gracing the cover. pictures returned in recent years,” he critical. suspects are old. Over 500 pages long, the encyclopedic says. “But there are likely hundreds more “It helps make my job easier,” says the “If they’re healthy, I think that these bas- tome is filled with case studies of valuable in the basements of museums in world’s chief Nazi hunter, Efraim Zuroff, tards have to pay for what they’ve done,” artworks either being taken from their Germany, Austria, the US and elsewhere.” director of the Wiesenthal Center’s he says. UNANSWERED QUESTIONS FROM HOLOCAUST CAN FILL VOLUMES Jews who perished. Gross tries to explain why. Soviet Union. Cutting-edge research has BY MARILYN H. KARFELD Yet, despite the voluminous research, “Was Jedwabne a singular or represen- set the framework of what needs to be investigated, but there is so much that n the summer of 1942, nearly 500 mid- there are countless unanswered ques- tative event?” asks Silberklang. “Was it scholars simply have not explored. dle-aged men, new recruits in German tions from the Holocaust, says unusual, what these Poles did? We don’t I For example, Silberklang says, there is Silberklang. know. We don’t know enough to reach a Reserve Police Battalion 101, agreed to no book on Greece in the Holocaust, in Since 1953, Yad Vashem has been conclusion.” shoot Jews in the head, brutal one-on-one part because of the Greek government’s gathering pages of testimony about the To this day, the editor of the journal Yad killings, even though their commanding reluctance to allow scholars complete officer offered to assign them to a less dif- Jews who were killed. Just over half of the Vashem Studies points out, no book tells the comprehensive story of the Holocaust access to its archives. ficult job. victims have been identified thus far. In the republics of the former Soviet Over the next nine months, these men Perhaps a million more names will even- in Poland, where three million Jews were killed. An 84-year-old scholar in Israel has Union and Russia itself, the task is per- killed 89,000 Polish Jews. Only 10 or 12 tually be collected. haps more daunting. Despite some inter- policemen asked to be relieved of the “The Nazis obliterated the rest, their been working on such a book for over 25 years. views with local people, Silberklang says, duty, and none was punished, writes his- lives and their deaths,” says Silberklang. “He’ll never finish the book,” Silberklang there are so many small killing sites that torian Christopher R. Browning in Other puzzles include the victims’ maintains. “The problem is, he’s one of still remain unknown. Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion response to the Holocaust, Silberklang the few people in the world with the nec- While the number of books published on 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. says. Why did some Jews try to save essary language skills and knowledge the Holocaust grows every year, Why did some Germans and Poles themselves from mass deportations and about Poland. If he can’t finish, who can?” Silberklang insists that there is no short- near-certain death, going into hiding or agree to become murderers, while others y the end of 2007, Yad Vashem age of research topics for interested stu- organizing Jewish resistance, while others refused, or at least hesitated? How many expects to publish its Lexicon of the dents to pursue. did not? B German police were involved in killing Ghettos, a compendium of articles detail- With the collapse of communism 16 Jews and never were held accountable for The date of the decision to launch the ing over 1,000 Jewish ghettos established years ago, the defunct Soviet Union their crimes? What about the fate of the “Final Solution” also eludes scholars, says by the Nazis and their collaborators during opened its archives throughout most of its collaborators? Silberklang. Did Hitler ever actively order World War II. The project, which began former republics. In Moscow’s Special These are among the unanswered the extermination of all the Jews of two-and-a-half years ago, has required Archive, documents are housed in a build- conundrums that remain from the Europe? While some scholars argue that the labor of a team of researchers. ing five stories tall, with nine more stories Holocaust, says David Silberklang, a he must have made that determination, Silberklang, who serves on the project’s underground, says the Yad Vashem histo- Brooklyn-born senior historian at Yad others insist there was no formal decision. editorial board, says experts with the abil- rian. The Soviets didn’t destroy a single Vashem, the Holocaust Remembrance Instead, they theorize that the Final ity to read and ensure the accuracy of the piece of paper. Authority of Israel. Solution policy evolved over time. ghetto lexicon are very hard to find. According to Silberklang, Shmuel Over 60 years have passed since liber- n July 1941, Poles, not German Nazis, Furthermore, there were hundreds, if Spector, the late Yad Vashem scholar, vis- ation of the in Ikilled 1,600 Jews, their fellow towns- not thousands, of Jewish communities in ited the Moscow archive in 1992 and said: Europe. In that time, scores of scholars people, in the small community of Poland for which there is no research. “If scholars live to be 120, work six days a have researched and written about the Jedwabne. These were their school- “There is information but no analysis, no week, 12 hours a day, it would take them persecution and killing of Europe’s Jews. mates, well-known shopkeepers and looking at patterns. We’re in diapers. 100 years just to turn the pages, let alone digest anything.” The Hall of Names at Yad Vashem holds familiar tradesmen. In his 2001 book We’re just beginning.” testimony and short biographies of over Neighbors: The Destruction of the Polish Similar questions remain about the First published in the Cleveland Jewish two million victims, about a third of the Community at Jedwabne, Poland, Jan T. Jews in Greece, Romania and the former News Page 12 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE March/April 2007- Adar/Nisan 5767 “I AM A LIVING EYEWITNESS” between the words is factual. God forbid, Birkenau. I think they even killed some SS Edelstein says that in the commotion BY SHAHAR ILAN everything in this book is true.” He added men,” he adds. “I was a youngster then, that existed on the day they left for the that he had met the brother of the boy who about 16-plus. It was the first time I had death march, it was reasonably possible he best-known scene in Elie was hanged in the United States. seen a hanging, and it was extremely to have been able to secretly remove a TWiesel’s book “Night” is apparently Subsequently, Rabbi Dov Edelstein, a shocking to see the young boy being violin from the camp. that of the execution. Three prisoners, two survivor of Auschwitz, contacted Haaretz. hanged. After that, I saw a great many.” The survivors of the death march were of them adults and the third a little boy, “I was present at the hanging of the two Edelstein does not remember how long were hanged at the Buna camp in taken on the train for 10 days from Poland adults and the boy,” he says. the boy remained alive. until they reached Germany. They got no Auschwitz after being implicated by the Edelstein, a Conservative rabbi, is now a Gestapo in the discovery of a weapons THE HOLY VIOLIN food and lived merely off snow. They pensioner who lives at Alfei Menashe and cache. The adults died immediately. But looked like skeletons and Wiesel relates is a member of the Hod Vehadar very mystical scene in “Night” takes the little boy, who did not weigh much, that the residents of the German villages Conservative congregation in Kfar Sava. Aplace toward the conclusion of hovered between life and death for more through which they passed stared at them He had been the rabbi of Conservative World War II, during the death march that than half an hour. in astonishment. From time to time, the congregations in Michigan, Wisconsin set out from Auschwitz. At night, in a place “Where is God?” someone standing train would stop so that the bodies of the and Georgia. He says: “I remember the called Gleiwitz, Juliek, one of the mem- behind Wiesel asked, and Wiesel relates bers of the camp’s orchestra, pulled out dead could be thrown from the wagons. exact details. There is no doubt about this. in the book that a voice from inside him his violin and played a fragment of a con- I am a living eyewitness. The story is BATTLES FOR BREAD replied: “Here, He is. He is hanging here certo by Beethoven: “The sound of the absolutely true.” on the gallows.” More than eight million violin in this dark shed, where the dead ne day, when they stopped, a In the article, I mentioned that the num- copies of “Night” were sold in the United were heaped on the living...How could I German laborer pulled a piece of ber tattooed on Wiesel’s arm is A-77133. O States alone. Oprah Winfrey chose it for forget that concert given to an audience of bread from his bundle and threw it in the Edelstein notes that “there are 155 num- her Book Club, and articles appeared say- dying and dead men?” Since then, Wiesel direction of the train. Wiesel tells how in bers between his number and mine.” He ing the hanging scene never happened in writes, he always thinks of the death that wagon people began attacking each says: “Every day when we returned from reality, or that there was no child there. march when he hears a Beethoven con- other like wild dogs, tearing each other work, the minute we returned, everyone The leading questioner of the scene’s certo. apart and biting each other. The laborers went to his own block. On that particular veracity was Prof. Raoul Hilberg, one of The violin scene has also been doubted. gathered round and suddenly started the world’s preeminent Holocaust schol- day they told us no one was to go away. In this case, the question is whether throwing pieces of bread into the different ars. Hilberg told Haaretz correspondent We went to the Appelplatz, the huge roll- someone would have been bothered to wagons, he says. These onlookers Daphna Berman that he was convinced call square in the center of the camp. In take with him such an awkward and heavy watched as “the skeletons” began literally the hanging had taken place but that “I the middle of the Appelplatz was a struc- instrument as a violin in the horrific condi- killing one another just to get a piece of don’t know whether there was a child ture with three wooden posts that resem- tions of the death march. Edelstein says bread. there.” bled the goals on a football field. I saw it of the death march: “We walked on foot all Wiesel recalls how an old man crawled Hilberg bases his claim, inter alia, on the and didn’t understand what it was. night and people fell down dead. Anyone out of the wagon on all fours with a piece testimony in the Auschwitz archives nam- “We waited and waited and meanwhile who couldn’t walk was shot. Simply got a of bread in his hand. His son attacked him ing the three persons hanged but does the orchestra played,” he recalls. bullet. The way was strewn with body after and took the food away from him. Two not mention that one was a child. In “Suddenly I saw three figures approach- body.” He continues: “The story about the other people fell on the son and when the Hilberg’s opinion, the question of whether ing under a heavily armed SS guard. They violin sounds possible to me. The orches- tumult was over, the father and son were there was a child among them is of great brought them to the three strange struc- tra used to play for us every day. For a dead. significance to Christian readers because tures that I couldn’t identify and then there member of the orchestra, the violin was Edelstein, who does not know Wiesel the scene in which two adults and a child was a ceremony. We had to put our hats more than holy, it was the greatest treas- personally, also was in one of the wagons. are hanged represents for them the cruci- on and take them off.” Edelstein says that ure in the world. It had saved his life when “Wiesel believes the laborers threw the fixion of Jesus Christ. In an interview I had “the Nazis told us what the three had he was in the camp. He had stayed alive bread because they wanted to have fun with Wiesel he said that “everything writ- done. They had stolen explosive materials by virtue of the violin. It created a deep and see how the Jews would fight over it. ten in ‘Night’ is factual. Even the silence from work and blown up the crematoria at emotional bond.” (Continued on page 15) WAS CHURCHILL ANTI-SEMITIC – AND DOES IT MATTER? must bear responsibility for what he per- I, Burt, are old English and Dutch stock. Truman urged the British to admit BY RAFAEL MEDOFF, DIRECTOR OF mits to be written in his name. This partic- We know who our ancestors are. We Holocaust survivors to Palestine, but he THE DAVID S. WYMAN INSTITUTE FOR ular article was authored in 1937 and then know there is no Jewish blood in our veins ...” never seriously pressured London to do HOLOCAUST STUDIES withdrawn from consideration by Churchill recent book about the owners of so. He is fondly remembered for granting three years later, following a dispute over AThe New York Times, by scholars diplomatic recognition to the State of newly-discovered unpublished arti- which publication would use it. It is Susan Tifft and Alex Jones, quoted FDR Israel minutes after the state was created, Acle by Winston Churchill, written in unknown if Churchill had second thoughts complaining about a “dirty Jewish trick” although he refused to send Israel 1937, claimed that Jews were “partly about the article’s contents. which he claimed the Times’ owners had weapons to defend itself against the responsible” for the mistreatment that used to keep their newspa- invading Arab armies. they suffered. per within the family. It has Roosevelt expressed sympathy for the Does the article prove that Churchill was also long been known that Jews being massacred by the Nazis, but anti-Semitic? And does it matter if he Roosevelt told French mili- refrained from taking meaningful steps to help them. On occasion, FDR told the was? tary leaders in North Africa British they should open Palestine to Jews The article, titled “How the Jews Can in 1943 that limits should fleeing Hitler, but he was never willing to Combat Persecution,” was found recently be placed on local Jews really lean on Churchill to do so. by Cambridge University historian Dr. entering some professions, Churchill supported the Zionist cause Richard Toye in the Churchill archives. In lest there be a recurrence throughout his career, often vigorously so it, Churchill denounces the “cruel and of “the understandable and in the face of fierce opposition within relentless” persecution of the Jews. But complaints which the his own cabinet. Yet, when it mattered he then criticizes German Jewish Germans bore towards the most, his support was more in the realm refugees in England for their willingness Jews in Germany”... of rhetoric than action. As prime minister to work for less pay than non-Jewish Harry Truman, too, had Winston Churchill Franklin D. Roosevelt during the Holocaust period, Churchill left laborers, which – he claims – caused anti- some less than pleasant in place the harsh White Paper policy that Semitism. Some of Churchill’s earlier statements things to say about Jews. A Truman diary kept all but a handful of Jews from enter- Churchill’s article also justifies anti- about Jews and communism indulged in found four years ago included this pas- ing Palestine, thus trapping them in Semitic responses to Jewish moneylend- anti-Semitic stereotypes, such as refer- sage: “The Jews, I find, are very, very self- Hitler’s inferno. ers: “Every Jewish moneylender recalls ring to the Russian Bolshevik leadership ish. They care not how many Estonians, Prof. Henry Feingold has asked, “Is it Shylock and the idea of the Jews as as “Semitic conspirators” and “Jew Latvians, Finns, Poles, Yugoslavs or conceivable that a policy that severely usurers. And you cannot reasonably Commissars.” Yet Churchill genuinely Greeks get murdered or mistreated as curtailed Jewish immigration and land expect a struggling clerk or shopkeeper, sympathized with pogrom victims and D[isplaced] P[erson]s as long as the Jews sales in Palestine... [at a time when] to paying 40 or 50 per cent interest on bor- strongly endorsed Zionism. get special treatment. Yet when they have deny its availability meant that death was rowed money to a ‘Hebrew Bloodsucker,’ Churchill was not the only public figure power, physical, financial or political nei- almost certainly the alternative... was not to reflect that almost every other way of whose sometimes less than flattering pri- ther Hitler nor Stalin has anything on them at least partly motivated by anti- life was closed to the Jewish people.” vate views about Jews were accompanied for cruelty or mistreatment to the under- Semitism?” Churchill biographer Martin Gilbert by support for Zionism. dog.” We may never know the answer to that believes the article may have been written A recently-discovered account of a 1939 It is difficult to know if the private state- question, but in the end, it may not even not by Churchill himself, but by his ghost- conversation between President Franklin ments by Truman, Roosevelt or Churchill matter. Whatever his motives, Churchill’s writer. Even if true, that does not really Roosevelt and then-Senator Burton about Jews affected their public positions policies spoke for themselves. absolve Churchill, since a public figure Wheeler quoted FDR as saying, “You and on Jewish issues. First published in The Bulletin March/April 2007- Adar/Nisan 5767 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 13

HOLOCAUST RECORDS POSTWAR GERMAN GOVERNMENT AND CIA “READY FOR RESEARCH SHIELDED NAZI CRIMINALS WITHIN A YEAR” early the entire collection of a long- (Continued from page 5) intelligence services, the Adenauer gov- 30 percent of BND employees were for- closed archive of Nazi death camp the Federal Republic of Germany, includ- ernment could not have proceeded in this mer members of the SS, the Gestapo or N records will be ready for research within a ing his role, between 1948 and 1952, as way. The thousands of pages newly the Nazi security service. year. chairman of the board of the Kreditanstalt released from the American national Therefore, it was natural that the CIA The archive’s director said he was seek- für Wiederaufbau (Loan Corporation for archives also cast light on the work of US was interested in covering up for Globke ing approval at a meeting in the Reconstruction), and afterwards as a agencies. The material makes clear that in 1960. of its 11-nation governing financial adviser to Konrad Adenauer and the US maintained a vast spy network of In January 1963, Adenauer was asked body to prepare the documents for inter- executive board member of the Deutsche former Nazis during the Cold War. by a US press agency correspondent national access. Bank. robably of greatest significance was whether it had been an error to make peo- Reto Meister, head of the International Theodor Maunz, who under Hitler was Reinhard Gehlen, Hitler’s chief of ple like Hans Globke one of his closest P Tracing Service, which runs the archive in an influential constitutional lawyer, wrote the military secret service on the Eastern Front. collaborators. Adenauer answered, “I the first commentary on the 1949 post-war From 1942 to 1945, he led the espionage the German spa town of Bad Arolsen, said have heard this question and also other the core documents – incarceration German constitution. He did so with his department in the Army gen- names again and again. But student, Roman Herzog, who later eral staff. Immediately after records, death catalogues, concentration note this well, my dear sirs, camp registries and transportation lists – became president of the Federal Republic the war, Gehlen and his one needs capable and reli- of Germany. This commentary by Maunz entire organization, consist- will be digitally scanned and ready for able people in order to devel- transfer to Holocaust institutions within and Herzog is still cited today. Maunz has ing of SS or SD (SS security op a democratic state. also provided legal advice to the self-pro- service) people, were placed two months. Democracy lives by the will, “It’s been going even faster than antici- claimed Hitler admirer Gerhard Frey, who in the service of the the readiness and the abilities founded the German Peoples Union and American secret service, the pated,” Mr. Meister said before the start of of people to secure liberty and the two-day meeting in The Hague. publishes the German National and Office of Strategic Services morality within the legal Soldiers Newspaper. Maunz has written (OSS), predecessor to the But the 11-nation governing committee order.” must give its approval for the complex articles for this neo-fascist newspaper. CIA. his seems to have When the first German Bundestag (post- Gehlen was assigned to technical preparations for transferring dig- remained the attitude of war federal parliament) met, more than develop Germany’s for- T ital copies to organizations such as the German governments to the half of the deputies had been members of eign secret service, to be US Holocaust Memorial Museum in present day. The historian Hitlers NSDAP (Nazi Party) prior to 1945. directed against the Washington and to Israel’s Yad Vashem Naftali complains, It is very dif- In the Foreign Ministry in 1952, two-thirds Soviet Union. “It was memorial in Jerusalem. Reinhard Gehlen ficult to illuminate international of the senior officials were former NSDAP important to use every The entire collection of 30 to 50 million history from only one side. It is a genuine members. Among section heads, the swine, as long as he was an anti-commu- pages, filling 16 miles of shelf and cabinet disgrace that the Federal Government number was four-fifths. nist,” the former boss of CIA operations in space in six buildings, will be 95 per cent refuses to publish its information on this Hans Filbinger, a member of the the Soviet Union, Harry Rositzke, wrote. scanned by the end of the year, Mr. Christian Democratic Union (CDU) after He added, “The necessity of recruiting fel- topic. I do not understand why Berlin does Meister said. the war, and formerly a member of the low combatants required a not-too-critical not want to release the BND files on the After years of pressure from survivors, NSDAP, resigned in 1978 as state premier look at their past.” Thus, Germany’s for- Eichmann case. Why not? I would be very the member countries of the governing in Baden-Württemberg when it was eign secret service (BND) absorbed curious to see what information the West International Commission agreed last revealed that he had authorized the death whole departments from the Nazis securi- German government had about May to unlock the archive to scholars. But sentence in several trials as a naval judge ty service. Eichmann, and how the decision was that decision, amending a 1955 treaty, during the Second World War. At first, the Adenauer government was reached about what should happen with must be ratified by all 11 countries, which Hans Speidel, who had been a profes- not informed of the CIA’s collaboration Eichmann, taken in the highest circles normally could take many years. sional soldier since World War One, with Gehlen, who had his first contact with between Adenauer and Globke. The United States, Israel and Poland becoming a major general in the the new federal government only at the The German establishment has no inter- have completed the process. Officials under Hitler, was a military end of 1950. It was Hans Globke who est in this chapter of German history being said they believe Germany, the advisor to Adenauer and played a central made the first official contact with the gen- debated once again in public. The new Netherlands, Luxembourg, Britain and role in the formation of Germany’s post- eral, who was working with his agents in exposures about Eichmann and Globke Greece will ratify the agreement before war Bundeswehr (Armed Forces). He died Pullach, near Munich. "I immediately have received little coverage in the the next meeting in two months. at 86, a highly decorated officer, having found a good contact and gained the German press. They are all the more The Tracing Service has handled 11 mil- been awarded the Knight’s Cross in 1944 impression that he correctly saw the sig- inconvenient at a time when the German lion inquiries for personal information in and elevated to the rank of four-star gen- nificance of my organization," wrote government is again engaged in military the last 60 years, but survivors have com- eral in 1957. Gehlen on this first meeting with Globke. operations around the world, and is pro- plained it has taken as long as three years Without the cooperation, or at least Gehlen led the BND till his retirement in moting “a healthy patriotism” on the basis to receive answers, and often, the infor- approval, of the US government and its May 1968. Even in 1970, between 25 and of 60 years of “experience with democracy.” mation was minimal. LACK OF WILL HAS LEFT HOLOCAUST-ERA I WAS A CHILD OF HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS

PROPERTY UNRETURNED (Continued from page 4) they put a friendly arm around our shoul- ders and draw us in. Especially attractive at least 115-175 billion dollars remain writes. And, “If it is impossible for the truth are the small number of colored drawings. unreturned. to be held in one’s pocket, I always filled BY ASHLEY PERRY, EJP The final painting hints at how much more No obligation was felt to deal with the my own with objects that could facilitate powerful this book might have been had lack of political will by the post-WWII extraordinary circumstances created by passage to a place and a time.” US government led to a slowdown But sometimes, Eisenstein’s sentences most of the art been in color. A the Holocaust,” concluded Zabludoff. With her words and pictures working in the return of goods stolen from Jews by While the issue of Holocaust restitution tighten and her description comes through the Nazis, according to a new research on sharp and clear, as when she envisions together, Eisenstein captures the insular died down for many decades, it resur- world her parents shared with their group Holocaust restitution. faced in the 1990s. According to her father as John Wayne, tying his horse to a piece of barbed wire and sauntering of other Holocaust survivors. Together, In the study, “Restitution of Holocaust Zabludoff, this was a result of the “duplic- into Auschwitz to howl away the menacing they presented a closed circle that, for the Era Assets: Promises and Reality” by for- ity of the Swiss banks” which held many guards and free the prisoners. She’s full of young Eisenstein at least, was an emo- mer CIA economist Sidney Zabludoff, the accounts of Jews since WWII, “the com- confidence when she adds to her draw- tional barrier it has taken years to sur- author claimed that while the US instruct- ing of age of the ‘third’ generation after the ings the part-Yiddish, part-English dia- mount. Some of her descriptions will ed its occupation forces to impound much Holocaust,” and “the increased availabili- logue spoken by her parents and their sur- haunt me: At a Toronto bar mitzvah circa of the property, as the Cold War began in ty of archival material in Russia and 1960, we meet Carola, sheathed and the 1950s “restitution became one of vivor friends. She leaves silences after the demise of the between the voice balloons and lets us fill shiny in her tightly fitting brocade dress many back-burner post-war issues that Soviet Union.” Although there was much in the transitions from our own experi- and lacquered hair, moving with special evolved into mundane discussions and activity on behalf of restitution by major ence. In one comic-strip section, she grace on the dance floor. And then the actions lasting for years.” Jewish organizations and the US and recalls the Yiddish-speaking world in younger Carola, falling through the air, Zabludoff added that the Eastern Israeli governments, the study concludes which she grew up. The panels are dis- having just jumped from a rumbling freight European governments were also to that “only about three percent of the jointed, impressionistic and nonlinear — train that is transporting her family and blame. “The issue disappeared with the unpaid Holocaust assets was restored and warm, human and effective. neighbours to almost sure death at regimes’ nationalization of residences and during the ten years since 1995. Her figures float, boneless, not quite Treblinka. I Was a Child of Holocaust businesses, as well as financial institu- According to Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld, weighted down by gravity. They have a Survivors may be marred by some weak tions and insurance companies, that held editor of the Jewish Political Studies distinctive look and the cartoonish style writing and drawing, but Bernice much of the Jewish wealth,” he wrote. Review, although some of the property allows her people to look simultaneously Eisenstein’s story is an important addition Despite numerous international agree- was destroyed during the war, much is still funny, poignant and noble. Though some to the graphic memoir/history/documen- ments made during World War II and being held by European governments and of her drawings looked rushed — I want- tary library. immediately thereafter, Zabludoff wrote, individuals. ed her to go back and improve them — First published in The Globe and Mail Page 14 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE March/April 2007- Adar/Nisan 5767 CLAIMS CONFERENCE PRESSING POLAND ALLIES MAY HAVE KNOWN FOR RESTITUTION LAW OF HOLOCAUST PLANS eaders of the Claims Conference Land the World Jewish Restitution DECLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS REVEAL FACTS OF HITLER’S “FINAL SOLUTION” Organization (WJRO) met with the Prime merican and British WWII military dite the destruction of Semitism, as she THE CHILEAN DISPATCH Minister of Poland and the Speaker of the Aintelligence authorities may have accuses international Judaism of all the Sejm, the Polish Parliament, to press for been aware of Adolph Hitler’s “Final uring German occupation, Prague calamities which have befallen the world. legislation on the restitution of private Solution” plan for the “eradication” of the Dwas no longer a capital of a country, “The exodus of the Jews from the Reich property stolen during the Holocaust. Jews of Europe as early as 1942, accord- and most foreign diplomats had departed. has not had the results prophesied by the At the meetings in Warsaw, Prime ing to documents just declassified under The former Chilean consul, Gonzalo enemies of Germany: on the contrary: Montt Rivas, however, was able to Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski committed to the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act of they have been replaced by Aryans with 1998. resume his post because of friendly rela- obvious advantage to everything and in legislation by the end of the year, but indi- According to a National Archives press tions between Nazi Germany and neutral everything, except in the usury line in cated that compensation will be based on release, by March 20, 1942, a surrepti- Chile. His location and good connections which they are past masters.” 15 percent of the value of the confiscated tiously obtained document appears in the provided a unique vantage point for dis- The West received partial information property. The Claims Conference and files of the United States Coordinator of cerning the Nazi agenda and actions in about the Holocaust from a multitude of WJRO will be working intensively in an Information (COI), a predecessor to the Nazi-occupied territories, a perspective sources, but Montt’s November 24, 1941 effort to ensure the best possible law be Central Intelligence Agency, clearly dis- not afforded to most Western diplomats. dispatch came to the West in early 1942, passed and that the program be estab- cussing the Nazi intent to eradicate Prompting his dispatch was a decree to which was very early in the flow of infor- lished rapidly. European Jewry. The document is a trans- be issued by Nazi Germany on November mation. The report, was one of a set of 25, 1941, announcing that Jews who had Poland is the only major country in the lated copy of a dispatch filed by a Chilean despatches from Chilean diplomats in diplomat on November 24, 1941. left Germany and were living abroad could Europe to the Chilean Foreign Ministry in former Soviet bloc that, in the 18 years The document sheds new light on the not be German subjects (they had lost their Santiago that were acquired by British since the fall of Communism, has not longstanding question of how much the citizenship by laws issued in 1935) and that intelligence and shared with American taken any measures to help former prop- Western powers knew of the Holocaust. all remaining assets of these Jews auto- intelligence during the war. erty owners or heirs recover private prop- According to Thomas H Baer, “Warnings matically were forfeited to the Reich. THE DECLASSIFICATION EFFORT erty stolen since 1939 that is still within from the allies to the Jews of Europe of a The diplomat wrote to the Chilean gov- the country’s borders. planned genocide never came. The Nazi ernment, translating part of the decree ince 1999, the Nazi War Crimes and The Claims Conference is working in murders depended on secrecy and sub- and making the following observations SJapanese Imperial Government coordination with groups representing terfuge. Warnings would not have stopped about Nazi policy in general: Records Interagency Working Group “The Jewish problem is being partially (IWG) has overseen the identification, non-Jewish former property owners who the Holocaust, but they could have saved lives.” Baer is a public member of the solved in the Protectorate [Reich declassification review, and release of for- lost their assets under Communism. The Interagency Working Group (IWG), a Protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia], as it merly classified U.S. Government records groups are PUWN (Polska Unia group that coordinates the government- has been decided to eradicate all the as required by the Nazi War Crimes Wlascicieli Nieruchomosci – Polish Union wide effort to declassify federal records Jews and send some to Poland and oth- Disclosure Act. Under the auspices of the of Real Estate Owners) and the related to Nazi and Axis war crimes, ers to the town of Terezin, whilst looking IWG, U.S. Government agencies have Landowners Association of Poland. Another IWG member, Elizabeth for a more remote place. declassified more than 3 million pages to In September, 2006, the government of Holtzman, added, “This recently declassified “The German triumph [in the war] will date. The records are available for Poland submitted draft legislation propos- document helps pinpoint how much officials leave Europe freed of Semites. Those research at the National Archives. In its ing compensation for confiscated private within our government knew about the [Jews] who escape with their lives from recent passage of the Japanese Imperial this trial will certainly be deported to Government Disclosure Act of 2000, property. However, it did not provide for Holocaust and when they knew it. The next question is why our government — not to Siberia, where they will not have much Congress endorsed the IWG’s effort to fin- the return of any actual property, excluded mention the British — did nothing in opportunity to make use of their financial ish the European war crimes phase and the substantial and valuable properties response. It is unbearable to think that plans capabilities. move into the Japanese and Far East located in Warsaw from its reach, and to ‘eradicate’ a Jewish population were a In proportion to the U.S.A. increasing its phase and thus complete the full task set offered limited compensation at best. matter of such indifference.” attacks on the Reich, Germany will expe- forth in the Disclosure Act. HOW BELGIUM SACRIFICED ITS JEWS HOLOCAUST HEROINE’S TO THE NAZIS SURVIVAL TALE (Continued from page 6) according to Van Doorslaer, from the long- (Continued from page 5) return the hidden children to any surviv- expelled from the schools. In June 1942, standing division of Belgium between the officer with a large backpack full of dol- ing relatives. Jews were prohibited from working as Flemish north and the Francophone lars. On the drive to her execution site MODESTY doctors. south. On the Flemish side, he says, there the officer knocked her unconscious. He he second crucial moment featured was more collaboration, both passive and stopped the car and left her bleeding on ne of the rescued was Elzbieta Tin the report took place in the sum- impassive. This difference did not derive the roadside. OFicowska, who now heads the mer of 1942 when the Jews were deport- from any love of Jews, he explained, but “It is beyond description to tell you Children of the Holocaust Association in ed to the East - to rather from patriotic and what you feel when traveling to your own Warsaw. As a five-month-old baby, she Auschwitz. Since 1940, nationalist sentiments. execution and, at the last moment, you was smuggled out of the ghetto in a Van Doorslaer says, there he third crucial moment find you have been bought out,” she wooden tool box on a lorry truck carrying had been administrative described in the report T said. bricks. collaboration with the occurred at the end of the The following day, unaware the execu- “To me and many rescued children, Nazis; the Belgians carried war. At that stage, the tion had not taken place, the German Irena Sendlerowa is a third mother. out the Germans’ instruc- Belgian legal system was authorities put up posters all over the Good, wise, kind, always accepting, she tions. In the instance of the weighing whether to try city announcing she had been shot. Mrs. shares our happiness and worries. We deportations, however, German collaborators. It was Sendlerowa read them herself. drop in for Irena’s advice when life pres- there was a clear differ- decided, for example, that She went into hiding and continued to ents us with difficulties,” she said. ence between the Antwerp police who par- work for Zegota. Several weeks later, Another of those rescued was Michal and Antwerp, the two ticipated in the deportation of her mother died. SS officers turned up at Glowinski, now a literature professor. largest cities in Belgium the Jews would not be tried. the funeral, demanding to know where “If being a saint is a complete devotion where most of the Jewish Van Doorslaer says the issue her daughter was. to a cause, bravery and altruism, then I population was concen- was too sensitive, because if Queen Elizabeth of Bavaria. On August 1, 1944, the Polish under- think Mrs. Sendlerowa fulfils all the con- trated. The report states the police officers bore ground rose up against the Germans in ditions. I think about her the way you that the Brussels police did not take part in responsibility then so did their command- the Warsaw Rising. As the street fighting think about someone you owe your life rounding up and deporting the Jews, ers - and if the latter had superiors, then raged, Mrs. Sendlerowa buried the bot- to,” he said. whereas in Antwerp the police helped the the entire system was responsible. tles containing the children’s names in a But like many of the Righteous, Mrs German forces close off streets to carry This possibility meant opening a colleague’s garden. Against overwhelm- Sendlerowa is modest about her out the deportations. One out of a total of Pandora’s box at a very delicate moment ing odds and with precious little help achievements. three deportations, on the 28th and 29th in Belgian history. “The Belgian state from Poland’s allies, the underground “Let me stress most emphatically that of August 1942, was even carried out in its decided at the end of 1945,” states the fought on for 63 days before finally capitulating. we who were rescuing children are not entirety by the Antwerp police. In this report, “that the Belgian authorities bore deportation, 1,243 Jews were caught and When the Red Army liberated Warsaw some kind of heroes. Indeed, that term no legal or other responsibility for the per- sent to the death camps. in January 1945, she dug up the bottles irritates me greatly. The opposite is true. secution of the Jews.” The explanation for this difference and handed over the lists to the Jewish I continue to have pangs of conscience between Brussels and Antwerp derives, First published in the Haaretz Committee. The information was used to that I did so little,” she said. March/April 2007- Adar/Nisan 5767 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE Page 15 PROFILE IN COURAGE JEWISH ARTIST CREATES MEMORIAL hen the Germans occupied Lucia, and granddaughter, Vira, would WTarnopol , Poland (now Ukraine ) bring food to the family each day. It was FOR KIELCE POGROM in 1941, Bronia Felberbaum and her par- not easy for the Balyks to obtain food, but Privately placed plaques on the building ents, Sophie and Jacob, were taken to the they never let the Felberbaums go hungry. BY RUTH ELLEN GRUBER, JTA on Planty Street commemorate the vic- ghetto in Velyki Birky. Jacob knew many After liberation, Bronia’s family moved tims, but Kielce itself had not erected a Christian families in Velyki Birky and was back to Tarnopol, which became part of he American son of Holocaust sur- able to make contact with Ukraine. Immediately after lib- Tvivors is creating Kielce’s first per- public memorial. Monuments placed at Helen Balyk. Helen prom- eration, the borders were manent public memorial to Poland’s most the former synagogue honor the more ised to hide the family on open but Jacob refused to infamous episode of postwar violence than 25,000 Holocaust victims from the her parents’ farm, provid- leave the Balyks. They had against Jews. city, as well as Poles who saved Jews dur- ed the Felberbaums were become family. The monument, designed by New York- ing the war. able to get there. Following Jacob’s death in born artist Jack Sal, is to be unveiled July Partly because of the reluctance to deal One day, the Gestapo 1958, Bronia and her mother 4, the 60th anniversary officer for whom Bronia’s left Ukraine as part of the of the so-called Kielce mother worked as a maid repatriation agreement with told her the ghetto would Poland. In 1960, they came to pogrom, an attack by a be liquidated that night. the United States. Franciska Polish mob that killed He allowed the entire fam- and Josef Balyk died years 42 Jewish Holocaust ily to spend the evening at ago. survivors and injured his home. The next day, As Bronia wrote to Yad another 50 or so. the Germans burned the Vashem, “While my parents The Kielce pogrom ghetto to the ground, have died, I am forever grate- was the worst of a killing everyone inside. ful to these kind, noble peo- series of Polish attacks Those who tried to escape Vira Vertepna Stochanska ple, who risked everything with her husband. on Jewish survivors were shot. they had to take in three returning to their homes After hiding for several days in different Jewish strangers, when no one else after the Holocaust. barns, the Felberbaums reached the farm would.” Kielce had 27,000 Jews of Helen’s parents, Franciska and Josef Lucia passed away in July 1998. Vira is before the war, but only A group of mourners at the burial site of the Jews killed in Kielce. Balyk. The Balyks hid and cared for the in her 70s and lives in Romanivka, in the a few hundred survived. Felberbaums. Josef built a hiding place same house where her family hid the openly with the issue over the years, Sal, next to the stable. The Balyks’ daughter, Felberbaums. Sparked by rumors that the returning Jews had killed a Christian child to use his who describes himself as a conceptual blood for ritual purposes, the pogrom artist, calls his monument to the pogrom JEWISH HEIRS URGE KARSTADT became a landmark in fostering the image victims “White/Wash II.” TO PAY COMPENSATION of ingrained Polish anti-Semitism, and he memorial will be shaped like a sparked the mass emigration of some Tbig number seven, lying on its side, merican heirs to a property empire to contest the ruling, even if that meant 100,000 Polish Holocaust survivors. as if fallen, to recall both the address on confiscated by the Nazis said they taking it to the highest European court. A Nine people were hastily tried and exe- Planty Street and the month of July — the would fight for restitution from Principe said she was saddened by the cuted for the murders by Poland’s location and time of the pogrom. KarstadtQuelle after the German retailer con- firm’s response. More than 750 square cement blocks tested a court order to compensate them. “It is clear to me that Karstadt do not Communist authorities, but the pogrom will make up the exterior surface. Forty- Karstadt, one of Germany’s leading seriously expect to win,” she said. Her two remained a festering and bitterly divisive two of them will be covered with lead retailers, sold the Berlin real estate that grandsons would continue the fight if she memory for decades. sheets and placed at random across the once belonged to the Wertheim family in could not do so herself, she added. Many Poles refused to accept that ordi- face of the work, representing the 42 vic- 2000 for 145 million euros ($183.5 million). Originally named Wertheim, Principe was nary people could have carried out such In August, a German court ordered a young girl when her family were forced carnage and blamed the attack on provo- tims. Karstadt to pay the proceeds to the into exile in the 1930s and the Nazis confis- Next to the seven, there will Jewish Claims Conference (JCC), which cated their business and property. be a column bearing a com- represents Wertheim heir Barbara After WW II, the real estate was award- memorative plaque with Principe and her family. ed to retailer Hertie by the occupying inscriptions in Polish, English “I am here to hold Karstadt accountable authorities. and Hebrew. The entire sur- for its conduct,” the 73-year-old Principe During the Cold War the property in face of the monument will be told a news conference at a Berlin hotel question lay in no-man’s land between painted with a white lime- built on land at the center of the dispute. East and West Berlin. wash, which will be main- Following the court decision, Karstadt In 1994 KarstadtQuelle bought Hertie and tained by the city. said they would exhaust all legal avenues assumed ownership of the disputed territory. This recalls that before the war, Jews in Kielce were active in the quarrying and “I AM A LIVING EYEWITNESS” manufacture of lime, Sal (Continued from page 12) felt very strong. I was the accuser, God Mourners and local residents shovel dirt into the mass grave of said. the victims of the Kielce pogrom during the public burial. I don’t agree with him at all,” he says. “I was the accused... We stayed for a long The Kielce monument is not remember the faces of the laborers. They time at the assembly place. No one dared cation by Soviet-backed secret police. the first time that Sal has dealt with the appeared to be in shock and were at their to drag himself away from this mirage. Public discussion of the affair during the Holocaust in his work, and he readily wits’ end; they were people who had Then, it was time to go to bed and slowly Communist era was virtually taboo. acknowledges that his family history has never seen such a sight in their lives. the prisoners made their way to their The Polish government made an official influenced him. There was rationing at the time, and this blocks. I heard people wishing one anoth- apology for the pogrom 10 years ago, on Sal’s father, born in Lithuania, was liber- was their daily ration of bread. You would- er a Happy New Year!” the 50th anniversary of the attack, but dur- ated from Dachau after surviving the n’t throw away bread like that. I was sur- Holocaust in numerous Nazi concentra- WAS THERE A PRAYER? ing that ceremony, Nobel laureate Elie prised at Wiesel for seeing them in such a Wiesel bluntly raised the issues and ques- tion camps. His mother, born in what is negative light.” Edelstein confirms the scene of the tions that had blighted the memory of now Ukraine, survived the war by hiding Ten thousand prisoners, including hanging but is totally in disagreement over Kielce for half a century. with her parents in the forest for two “kapos” and commanders of the blocks, that of the prayer service and the possibil- “True, the killing was perpetrated by years. ity that 10,000 people would gather in participated in the Rosh Hashanah prayer hoodlums,” he said. “But what about the The two met after the war’s end in a dis- service, held in the Buna forced labor Auschwitz openly to hold a forbidden soldiers who reportedly took part in them? placed persons camp near Munich and camp at Auschwitz in 1944, Wiesel relates prayer service. And what about the others, the onlookers, eventually moved to New York, where Sal in “Night.” The hazan chanted “Blessed be “Even the imagination cannot conceive the bystanders? And where were the was born in 1954. the name of the Eternal,” and the crowd of such a service,” he says. “I wonder ‘solid citizens’ of the town? How many of In 1998-2000, Sal created a sculptural responded with the benediction. This, for what could have happened to Wiesel that installation in Munich, outside the apart- Wiesel, was not a prayer service like any he would write such a thing. It’s simply them even tried to stop the massacre? other. “Why, but why should I bless Him?” hallucinatory. He must have been dream- “What happened in this place showed ment building where his newly married he asks in the book. “In every fiber of my ing.” that normal citizens could be as cruel as parents lived after the war. body, I rebelled. Because He had had Edelstein who also wrote a book about the killers of any death camp,” he said. The work, sponsored by the Munich thousands of children burned in His pits? his experiences in the Holocaust, cites the “Auschwitz, Majdanek, Treblinka, Belzec, Public Art Commission, entailed a bronze Because He kept six crematoria working opposite kind of example. On the eve of Chelmno” were “German inventions; cast slab, approximately the size of two night and day, on the Sabbath and on Yom Kippur, when the Kol Nidrei prayer is Kielce was not. Kielce’s murderers were large paving stones, with its surface most- feast days?” On that day, Wiesel relates, recited, he says, “we got together with the Poles. Their language was Polish. Their ly covered by scored markings. The “I had ceased to plead. I was no longer utmost secrecy, and quietly, in whispers, hatred was Polish.” remainder was smooth, as if it had been capable of lamentation. On the contrary, I recited our prayers.” The affair has remained a touchy issue. wiped clean — or eradicated. Page 16 MARTYRDOM & RESISTANCE March/April 2007- Adar/Nisan 5767 HILLEL HOSTS FLORIDA PREMIERE OF YAD VASHEM'S “NO CHILD'S PLAY” EXHIBIT Jewish day school in the shows in detail the intake process they BY ILANA LIPSON, THE DIRECTOR OF southeastern United experienced at the camp. The Tolkatchev MARKETING AND COMMUNICATIONS States, hosted the region- Exhibit depicts through a series of paint- AT THE SAMUEL SCHECK HILLEL al premiere of “No Child’s ings created by Private Zinovii Tolkatchev, COMMUNITY DAY SCHOOL Play.” The week was a Jew in the Russian Army, the images he highlighted by an opening saw upon his arrival at the camp. hrough children’s toys, games, art- night welcome from Eli Our Education Department holds an work, diaries and poems, South T Zborowski, Chairman of Annual Educators’ Conference in New Florida families recently learned about the the American and York City. We are currently looking to Holocaust in way that spoke directly to the International Societies for expand our reach nationwide, so that younger generation. This display of chil- Yad Vashem. Mr. schools across the country will have Zborowski spent the fol- access to Yad Vashem's one-of-a-kind lowing two days with educational tools. Hillel’s middle and high school students, walking through the exhibit and sharing his story of sur- Eli and Elizabeth Zborowski (center) presented to Hillel’s Dr. Adam vival and struggle. Holden (left) and Rabbi Michael Druin a gift of an Israeli postage “Rarely can our children stamp of the image of a survivor’s teddy bear. so easily relate to their pare them for college admission. By history, yet “No Child’s Play” directly con- engaging students in meaningful cultural nected them to their past,” said Dr. Adam and religious experiences, Hillel strives to Holden, Hillel’s head of school. “Hillel is deepen their commitment to Judaism, the grateful to Yad Vashem and Mr. and Mrs. Jewish people and the State of Israel. Zborowski; the time, images and stories he American Society for Yad they shared made an inspirational, ever- TVashem has recently expanded its lasting imprint on our students.” Cultural and Education Departments, and nlike other Holocaust exhibitions, we are pleased to be able to offer several Eli Zborowski, Chairman of the American “No Child’s Play” does not focus on traveling exhibits to your community upon Society for Yad Vashem, addressing people gath- U Hillel parent Stefanie Wolf walked through the statistics or physical violence. Instead, it request. We are currently working with ered at the opening of the “No Child’s Play” provides a glimpse into what children’s “No Child’s Play” exhibit with her daughters Exhibit. Also pictured, Rabbi Michael Druin. several schools which will be showing the Shoshi and Alexandra. lives were like during the Holocaust and No Child's Play exhibit. This exhibit is dren’s treasures is Yad Vashem’s “No how everyday items became sources of available for 2-3 week showings. The If you want more information on the Child’s Play” exhibit, which showcases the comfort and companionship. other two exhibits currently available are availability of any of the exhibits, please creative results of imagination tainted by fear From early childhood through high the and Tolkatchev At feel free to contact Elizabeth Zborowski at and loneliness, magnified by innocence. school, Hillel is a Jewish community day the Gates of Hell. The Auschwitz Album 212-220-4304. For Educational materials In February, The Samuel Scheck Hillel school structured to cultivate and inspire documents one of the last Hungarian or programming, please contact Ilana Community Day School, the largest students’ interests and talents and to pre- transports to arrive at Auschwitz, and Apelker at 212-220-4304. BOXCAR TRIGGERS PAINFUL MEMORIES OF THE HOLOCAUST survivors who converged sanitation. As death ing, which they estimated was attended BY ROBERT NOLIN at the end of February thinned the ranks of by about 1,000 South Floridians. There on the Broward County the roughly 100 people were speeches about Holocaust remem- ccupying a corner in an orderly Convention Center to inside, the living used brance and Jewish songs and prayers. exhibit hall, stark under a bank of O witness the formal the bodies of the dead Michael Berenbaum, a Holocaust histori- spotlights, the old Nazi boxcar seemed unveiling of the Nazi-era as benches. Even the an who procured the railcar from Gydnia, robbed of much of its menace. railcar. German troops who Poland, came from Los Angeles to attend. Instead, the focus fell on the triumph of Historians have yet to opened up the car “Look at that car and understand its sheer the old men and women who milled confirm whether the were surprised to find horror,” he said. “Appreciate the valor and around the rusting railcar. They were the decaying railcar with the only 22 alive, Adler anguish of those who were in it and imag- Holocaust survivors who lived to recount faint black swastika said. ine the unbridled, absolute evil of those Boxcars like one shown in the picture the inhumane cruelty of being transported actually ferried victims to who put the Jews in this car.” were used by Nazi to transport Jews to he railcar, its to death camps on railcars just like this one. camps in Germany and Audience members blinked back tears the death camps. Tpaint faded and “It’s painful,” said Philip Eisenberg, of Poland, but it serves peeling, will serve as a or simply wept outright, as Leo Pembroke Pines. “When I look at it, I nonetheless as a grim reminder of horror teaching tool. It will be partially restored Shniderman of Aventura, recalled a days- choke up.” from another age. for visitor safety and on public view once long trip in a similar rail car in 1944. The The 83-year-old retiree spent 18 days “I was on a car like that when they took it is installed on unused railroad tracks journey ended at a death camp, where his traveling in the same type of boxcar in us to Auschwitz,” said Leo Adler, 85, of about a half block from the Holocaust mother was torn from his arms to sure 1945. More than 100 other people were Hallandale Beach. “I was in the car for Documentation & Education Center that death. “This car comes from a world packed into the car. Only six climbed out alive. eight days.” will open next year in Hollywood. It’s one upside-down,” Shniderman said. Eisenberg’s tale was similar to that of Death rode the car as well. There was of eight such railcars in the United States. First published in the South Florida many among an estimated 500 Holocaust no food or water, and a bucket served for Museum officials organized the unveil- Sun-Sentinel

Martyrdom & Resistance International Society for Yad Vashem NON-PROFIT ORG. Eli Zborowski, Editor-in-Chief MARTYRDOM AND RESISTANCE U.S. POST Yefim Krasnyanskiy, M.A., Editor 500 FIFTH AVENUE, 42nd FLOOR, PAID *Published Bimonthly by the NEW YORK, N.Y. 10110-4299 NEW YORK, N.Y. PERMIT NO. 10 International Society for Yad Vashem, Inc. 500 Fifth Avenue, 42nd Floor New York, NY 10110 (212) 220-4304 EDITORIAL BOARD Eli Zborowski Marvin Zborowski Mark Palmer Sam Skura Israel Krakowski William Mandell Sam Halpern Isidore Karten** Norman Belfer Joseph Bukiet** *1974-85, as Newsletter for the American Federation of Jewish Fighters, Camp Inmates, and Nazi Victims **deceased